The Circle of Reason

Chapter One. Heads

The boy had no sooner arrived, people said afterwards, than Balaram had run into the house to look for the Claws.

There were plenty of people gathered outside the big house to vouch for it — boys in buttonless shorts, toothless, shrouded widows, a few men who had not found work for the day, squatting and scratching. Toru-debi threatened and scolded, but not one of them budged. It was not every day that someone new arrived in Lalpukur. Especially in such unusual circumstances (everyone knew them, of course).

Years later — thirteen to be exact — when people talked about all that had happened, sitting under the great banyan tree in the centre of the village (where Bhudeb Roy’s life-size portrait had once fallen with such a crash), it was generally reckoned that the boy’s arrival was the real beginning. Some said they knew the moment they set eyes on that head. That was a little difficult to believe. But, still, it was an extraordinary head — huge, several times too large for an eight-year-old, and curiously uneven, bulging all over with knots and bumps.

Someone said: It’s like a rock covered with fungus. But Bolai-da, who had left his cycle-repair shop and chased the rickshaw which was bringing Toru-debi and the boy home from the station, all the way to the house on his bamboo-thin bandy legs, wouldn’t have that. He said at once: No, it’s not like a rock at all. It’s an alu, a potato, a huge, freshly dug, lumpy potato.

So Alu he was named and Alu he was to remain, even though he had another name, finely scriptural — Nachiketa. Nachiketa Bose. But Alu was all that he was ever known as, and nobody could deny its appropriateness.

It was remarkably apt, as Bolai-da said — a little too apt, if anything — that Balaram, who had for so many years spent all his spare time measuring and examining people’s heads, should have a nephew who had the most unusual head anybody had ever seen. No wonder he had run inside as soon as he set eyes on the boy (though he could have waited a bit since the boy was, after all, coming to live with him).

People were sorry for the boy, of course. It was barely a week since he had lost his mother and his father (Balaram’s brother) in a car accident. It was hard after a shock like that to go away to live with an unknown aunt and uncle.

It was common knowledge that the boy had not met Balaram, his own uncle, ever before. Balaram and his brother had never so much as exchanged a letter since the day, fourteen years before Alu arrived in Lalpukur, when Balaram took his share of their inheritance and moved to the village — without so much, as his brother shouted after him, as a thought for the floundering family business. Later, with that vicious prescience peculiar to close relatives, he had even left instructions in his will that Balaram was not to be told of his death, nor asked to attend the funeral. But, as people told their children, nodding wisely, death chooses its own ironies: in the end it was to Balaram that his orphaned and more or less destitute son had to go.

And after all that to be faced with an unknown uncle bearing down on you with what looked like gigantic eagle’s talons!

Actually, it was only Balaram’s Claws. The villagers through long familiarity knew it to be harmless; but, still, they also knew it was little less than terrifying when seen for the first time. It was a kind of instrument, with three arms of finely planed and polished wood, each tapering to a sharp point at one end and joined to the others by a calibrated hinge. Balaram had designed it himself, soon after he discovered Phrenology. It had been made for him in Calcutta, at considerable expense. But, for all that, it was a simple instrument; merely a set of calipers, for measuring skulls. Only, at first sight, it looked as though it had been specially designed for gouging out eyes.

As Balaram advanced with the Claws held out in front of him, the boy shrank back, his knees shaking beneath his starched black shorts. Luckily for him, at that very moment Toru-debi turned towards the house after paying off the rickshaw. One look at the Claws and she knew exactly what was happening. She bounded up the four steps to the door with a cry, and snatched the instrument out of her husband’s hands. He dropped his head, crestfallen, and ran his fingers through his thick white hair. Again? she cried, herding him into the house. You’ve started again? And on your own nephew, even before he’s stepped into the house?

She came back to fetch the boy only after she had shut Balaram safely into his study. The boy was standing on the steps in front of the door, staring silently with his large wondering eyes, at the people gathered outside and the swaying coconut palms and fields of green rice beyond. She took him by the hand and led him into the house, and with one last angry gesture at the people outside she barred the door behind her.

But once he was inside the house she panicked. Tugging him across the courtyard towards the smoky, soot-blackened kitchen on the other side, she shouted: Nonder-ma, Nonder-ma.

Nonder-ma hobbled out of the kitchen mumbling toothlessly, bent almost double, no more than a few withered bones, with her widow’s white homespun wrapped so carelessly around her that her dugs flapped outside, hanging down to her shrunken waist. Give him milk, give him milk, Toru-debi cried. She remembered that children are said to like milk. Muttering and complaining, Nonder-ma handed him a brass tumbler; and then, thrusting her face forward till he could see the grey flecks in her eyes, she examined him minutely. Liverish, she muttered. Look at his eyelids. Probably constipated, too.

The boy put the tumbler down and looked away. Be quiet, Nonder-ma, Toru-debi said, and handed it back to him, clucking her tongue in encouragement. But he would not touch it again.

What did he want? What do boys of eight do? What do they want? Childless herself, Toru-debi knew nothing of children. Children inhabited another world. A world without sewing machines. They neither hemmed, nor chain-stitched, nor cross-stitched, nor quilted. What did they do?

She had spent the whole morning worrying. How would a boy of eight, brought up in the clamour and excitement of Calcutta, like Lalpukur, she had wondered, as the cycle-rickshaw, honking with flurries of its rubber hooter, took her down the red-dust lanes of the village; past the great vaulted and pillared banyan tree with the tea-shop and Bolai-da’s unrepaired cycles nestling in dark niches in its trunk; past the rickety shed of the pharmacy, where the young men of the village gathered in the evenings to read newspapers and play cards and drink toddy; past the ponds mildewed with water-hyacinth and darkened by leaning coconut palms, through velvety green fields of young rice, to the little red-brick station three miles away.

Once she was at the station she forgot her greater worry for the more immediate one of finding the right boy. And when at last she saw him, potato head and all, with a few bits of luggage and an impatient relative beside him, the Singer which had so long and so securely colonized her heart wobbled precariously. For a moment. Ten years earlier she might perhaps have pushed the machine away altogether, but at middle age it was too difficult to cope with the unexpected. Besides, the Singer had been part of her dowry; she had seen it for the first time on the morning after the traumas of her wedding night; it was her child in a way her husband’s nephew could never be. On the way back to the house she began to explain to the boy that his uncle had not come to meet him because he was busy (which was a lie: the truth was that Balaram had been afraid — he had not been able to summon the courage to meet this offspring of his brother in the impersonality of a railway platform), but he showed no interest, so she talked to him happily of the clothes she would make him on her sewing machine.

That was how it was to be with Toru-debi and Alu. After he arrived her courtship with her machine was to be forever punctuated by bouts of concern for the boy. Had he eaten? Had he bathed? Where was he?

But actually the daily chores of bathing him (for it was clear that he had never seen a well before) and feeding him fell to Nonder-ma. She complained, of course; but, then, Nonder-ma had always complained, ever since the day Nondo, her first-born and only son, left her tyranny behind him and ran off to Calcutta with all that she possessed (which was very little), leaving her only the lifelong curse of his name.

Everything in this house, Nonder-ma often muttered, falls to me — the cooking, sweeping, washing, everything, and now the boy, too. And all for what? A few rupees, hardly enough for a sari a year.

Lying, ungrateful woman, Toru-debi would rail. I do nothing but give you money all day long, do everything for you, and still you go on and on. D’you think I’ve got a money tree?

And in any case it was little Maya Debnath, no bigger than Alu, who actually did most of the washing and sweeping, walking over every day from her father’s huts beyond the bamboo forest. Besides, Toru-debi would say, what do you have to do for the boy anyway? But that she would say a little uncertainly, for her idea of what had to be done for the boy was by no means clear.

The truth was that Nonder-ma did not really have to do very much for Alu even in his first year in Lalpukur, for when he was not at school he was busy exploring the house.

It took him a long, long time, for the house brimmed over with rooms. The plan was simple (Balaram had designed it himself): there was a large square courtyard in the centre, shaded by the overhanging branches of a huge mango tree. There were rooms all around the courtyard, built on a high foundation a few feet off the ground. A cool open veranda ringed the courtyard, joining the rooms. A red tile roof, held up by bamboo struts, sloped low over the veranda, so that the sun never reached the rooms. It was always cool inside, and green, for the light was filtered through the innumerable lemon and banana trees and coconut palms which grew around the house.

The kitchen and the store-rooms fell on the far side of the courtyard, opposite the front door. A path snaked out from a small door next to the kitchen and led to a well and, beyond it, a pond surrounded by thickets of bright yellow bamboo. One side of the courtyard was Toru-debi’s and the other Balaram’s, each with four rooms. The fourth side, which faced out towards the dusty red lane, was kept for receiving visitors. That was the only part of the house which had two floors: there was one small room directly above the front door, joined to the courtyard by a ramshackle wooden staircase.

In those early days nobody could be sure where Alu disappeared. Sometimes he would be found in Toru-debi’s room with its perpetually burning electric lights, its heavy mosquito-netted bed, its hillocks of trunks and discarded cloth, its sewing machine, and its incense-blackened images of Ma Kali, Ma Durga and Ma Saraswati piled high on the trunks (you had to be an athlete to pray in that room, Balaram used to say); and sometimes they would find him in the huge room which faced out, with its clutter of dust-laden furniture, carefully laid out for guests who never came; or in rooms pungent with pickles in stone jars, or rooms piled high with old newspapers and English magazines and cut-out sewing patterns, or others stacked with grain and alive with rats’ squeaks and the quick slithering of snakes, or others half-full of firewood and coal, or others still, empty of everything but dust, built in who knew what unspoken hope?

And of course there was Balaram’s study in one corner of the courtyard.

For a long time Balaram could not persuade Alu to come near his study, and he bitterly regretted the rash impulse which had sent him looking for his instruments the day the boy first arrived. It was little less than a torment to him to have to watch that extraordinary skull at a tantalizing distance, just beyond examining range.

Balaram did not know that when he was away, or when he had to work late at the school, Alu would often slip into the dim, dusty room and perch on Balaram’s immense easy chair and arrange its folding arms at right angles like the wings of a plane. And when he tired of that he would prowl around the room breathing in the smell of yellowing paper and staring at the rows of books in the tall, glass-fronted bookcases.

It was not till many months had passed that Alu would enter the room while Balaram was in it, and even then he would only stand at the door and look in, often for hours, while Balaram read reclining in his easy chair. Balaram kept his patience, and it was well worth it, for when at last the boy trusted him enough to let him run his fingers over his skull for the first time he knew at once that it held material enough for a lifetime’s study.

At first, as Balaram admitted to himself, he was baffled. The boy’s head confused him utterly and for entirely unfamiliar reasons. Most heads were puzzling because they were so even. Often there was nothing, not the slightest undulation or bump to mark the major faculties and organs. Most heads, in a word, were dull, even boring.

With Alu it was another matter altogether; it was like sitting down to a wedding feast after years of stewed rice. His head abounded with a profusion of bumps and knots and troughs, each more aggressively pronounced than the next and scattered about with an absolute disregard for the discoveries of phrenology. The array of bumps and protuberances grew cheerfully all over his head and showed no signs at all of dividing into distinct and recognizable organs. It was all very confusing and very exciting — a wealth of new stimulating material. In time it prompted Balaram’s paper on the Indistinctness of the Organs of the Brain (he sent it to the Bombay Natural History Society and to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, but unaccountably it was never acknowledged).

Later, when Alu was old enough to understand, Balaram often said to him: You’d have to change your head if you read Spurzheim or Gall — wouldn’t be able to live with the confusion.

Take, for instance, that big spectacle-shaped lump which covered a large part of the back and sides of Alu’s head. Starting a little above the hair-line, it stretched across the skull, but stopped short of the ears. To put it more precisely, it covered the squama occipitus and grew over the lateral areas of the lambdoidal suture, covering symmetrical parts over the asterion. It looked harmless enough, though hardly pleasing, but for Balaram it meant a fair number of sleepless nights. It was large enough to contain a multitude of organs and yet its boundaries were too shadowy to say which. And the worst part was that it was right on the trickiest part of the skull, for the founders of the science of phrenology were all agreed that the organs which govern the lowest and least desirable propensities all grow on the back and sides of the head. For all Balaram knew, a witch’s brew could be bubbling in that lump — Destructiveness perhaps, mixed with Amativeness or Secrecy and peppered with Combativeness or Acquisitiveness. And if he could find no way of identifying and combating those organs it would be just a matter of time before they drove the poor boy to some hideous crime.

But eventually it all turned out well, for Balaram discovered that the lump cloaked nothing more serious than the organs of Philoprogenitiveness or the Love of Children, Adhesiveness or Friendship and, regrettably, Combativeness. There was even a possibility of Vitality at the base of the skull but, on the whole, Balaram was one of those who argued against rather than for the existence of the Organ of Vitativeness.

Seen as a whole, it wasn’t altogether encouraging, but still Balaram could not but be grateful that the lump so neatly avoided Destructiveness and Secretiveness and Acquisitiveness and all the other moral quicksands which lie around the ear. It was only much later, when Alu was older, that Balaram noticed Amativeness or, to put it bluntly, the Organ of Sex blossoming tumescently just above the hair-line. He jotted it down in his notebook with horrified embarrassment; no doubt it had something to do with Self-Abuse. Ever after he did his best not to look at it.

As for the rest of Alu’s head, it took Balaram years before he could even begin to make sense of certain protuberances, and some were to remain puzzling for ever. But in a general way he was more or less sure that there were distinct depressions over the organs of Self-Esteem, Vanity and Cautiousness. On the other hand, there was a pleasing undulation over Benevolence, just below the crown. To Balaram’s great relief the crown itself with its collection of religious organs was absolutely flat. And the two pronounced horn-like protuberances on both sides of the crown probably held Firmness, Hope and Wonder, while the depressions at the temples almost certainly spelt the lack of Poesy and Wit (over neither of which was Balaram likely to shed any tears). But the strangest part of that strange head was the forehead, for it was enigmatically flat exactly where all the higher Perceptive and Reflective faculties ought to have been, except for a mysterious bump in the centre, where the hair began. That bump could be anything — Language, Eventuality, Cause …

Many, many years were to pass before Balaram discovered its function.

Balaram often wished there was something to be learnt from Alu’s physiognomy, but the boy’s face gave very little away. It was a compact face, of what Kretschmer called the shield-shaped type: that is, straight at the sides with a rounded jaw and chin — with large eyes and generous lips. The nose was of the kind which the Barbarini manuscript names Lunar — short, with a rounded end. But those were mere classifications; there was nothing to be learnt from them. Looking at his face, nobody could have called the boy handsome or ugly. If there was a word for it, it was ordinary. In fact, with his stocky build and being as he was, neither tall nor short nor dark nor fair, Alu would have been nothing other than ordinary to look at if it were not for his head.

When Alu was much older and had to sit on the floor because he had grown too heavy for the arms of the easy chair, Balaram often used to wonder aloud, patting him gently on Benevolence, at how the two of them came to be so unlike each other. After all, they were blood relatives and there ought to have been something to show for it, something in the skull. There could no longer be any doubt, he used to say, that the skull and therefore the character are to some degree hereditary. Wasn’t that why Lombroso was so celebrated — for demonstrating the hereditary nature of character? Wasn’t that why the American laws of 1915 prescribing sterilization for confirmed criminals were enacted?

But, laws or not, there was no discernible resemblance between Alu and Balaram. Balaram’s head was long, narrow and finely modelled. It was almost flat at the back and sides, and, except for two barely perceptible undulations over Vanity, it betrayed not the slightest trace of a Lower Sentiment or Propensity. But it had not always been so. When Balaram first began to read about phrenology, he had discovered a few signs of liveliness on his Amatory Organ. Balaram was, and always had been, extremely prudish. Such was his embarrassment at his discovery that in a few weeks he managed to rub a fair-sized depression into the back of his neck.

Balaram’s physiognomy reflected his cranium perfectly. He had a thin, ascetic face, with clean lines, a sharp ridge of a nose and wide, dreamy eyes. His high, broad forehead rose to a majestic dome, crowned with a thick, unruly pile of silver hair. It was an astonishing forehead: it shone; it glowed; it was like a lampshade for his bulging Higher Faculties — Language, Form, Number, the lot. It was a striking face even in repose. Sometimes, when he was animated, it was lit with such a bright, pointed intensity that it imprinted itself on the minds of everyone who saw him in those moments.

After he began thinking about heredity and character seriously, Balaram often wondered what a child of his would look like. Once, on one of his frequent visits to Calcutta, he put the question to Gopal Dey, his oldest and dearest friend. They were walking in the ornamental gardens of the National Library at the time (it was a beautiful garden in those days when B. S. Kesavan was the director of the Library, not an overgrown, bureaucratized swamp as it is now). Gopal was tired. He had spent a long hard day at the High Court, and after hours of ploughing through briefs he was in no mood to speculate about the children Balaram might have had. In any case, it was a difficult question. If Balaram had had children, they would in all likelihood have been Toru-debi’s children as well, and, in contrast to the lean ascetic Balaram, Toru-debi, with her soft woolly cheeks and dimpled face, was a bundle of pleasantly unruly plumpness, even though her eyes, somewhat at odds with the rest of her face, had been honed into pinpoints of concentration by her years at her sewing machine.

Toru-debi had never permitted Balaram to examine her skull, and never would, but for years Balaram had carefully observed her head in the mornings when her hair clung to her head after her bath, and as far as he was concerned he knew it as intimately as one of his plastic demonstration skulls. It was a large head, with a not inconsiderable cranial capacity; more or less evenly rounded, except for well-marked protuberances on the median over the bregma, on the religious organs, and another on the occipital bone. That was an odd one: once upon a time he would have had no hesitation in entering it under Philoprogenitiveness, or a remarkably well-developed Love of Children. But over the years he had watched it slip sideways, towards the asterion, until it became something else altogether. Sometimes he interpreted it as Constancy, but the suspicion always lurked somewhere in his mind that actually it was the yet unclassified organ of Tenacity (or, not to mince words, plain bloody Obstinacy). As for the rest, he could guess at a luxuriant growth on Constructiveness or the Mechanical Sense (for even sewing needed a mechanical sense of a kind), but he had never been very sure about the exact location of that organ. And then, of course, there was that swollen lump above the ear meatus, which he had no alternative but to interpret as Destructiveness. It was certainly true that her face, usually so tranquil (mainly because she hardly seemed to recognize the existence of a world outside her sewing room), was quite transformed when she was angry. In a rage she was capable of doing anything at all.

If you and Toru had a child, Gopal said sharply, it would probably be quite ordinary.

Oh? said Balaram, disappointed, and turned away to look at the extravagant stucco façade of the National Library.

Gopal had not really believed in phrenology or physiognomy or Balaram’s theories of heredity ever. And over the years he had developed a positive hostility to them. That may have been because in one of their earliest arguments on the subject Balaram had said to him, in a long-regretted flash of temper: You ought to be preserved in methylated spirit. You’re a discovery. You’re the only person alive with a Phlegmatic organ.

Gopal had little vanity. Even in those days, well before middle age, he knew himself to be short and paunchy. He knew his broad face with its childishly rounded cheeks to be pleasant, but nothing more. But he was not phlegmatic; anybody who cared to look at his eyes, shining behind his gold-rimmed glasses, would know that at once. But the trouble with people like Balaram was that theories came first and the truth afterwards.

Take, for example, Balaram’s theory about Dantu.

Dantu, their friend and ally through all their most difficult times in college, had vanished soon after his final examinations (in fact he had had very little to do with Balaram after the Accident, but that’s another story). A year after college they heard that he had found a good job with a tea company. But soon after he vanished again. They often wondered what had happened to him, but this time he really hadn’t left a trace. But then, one day, more than twenty years afterwards, with the help of his new-found theories Balaram declared confidently that Dantu had become a sadhu; that he had abandoned worldly life and was wandering around the country with a begging-bowl. Why? Simple. Because of his sharply domed head, of course, and his thin, hollow face and those two long, peeping front teeth from which he took his name. It’s his bregma, said Balaram. I can see now that it was Veneration that had pushed his skull up so sharply. Besides, he always had the look of a saint.

Nonsense, said Gopal, but only to himself, for he knew how touchy Balaram was about his theories. Nonsense; politics interested Dantu much more than religion — it’s just that your theory doesn’t allow for a Political organ.

And, sure enough, a year or so later he came upon an article in a newspaper about a Shri Hem Narain Mathur (which was only Dantu under his real name) who had been arrested somewhere in north Bihar for organizing the landless labourers of the area to agitate for fair wages. He snipped the article out and showed it to Balaram later, but he didn’t say, as he had planned to: Veneration is a long way from leading strikes. What about your theory now?

That was just it, the reason why phrenology was rubbish — all theory and no facts. He had said so, as he never tired of repeating, since the very first time Balaram had shown him the copy of Practical Phrenology that he had discovered in a secondhand bookshop in College Street.

As it happens, we know exactly when that happened. It happened on 11 January 1950 at 4.30 in the afternoon. We know the date because that was the day Madame Irène Joliot-Curie, Nobel Laureate in physics and daughter of the discoverers of radium, Pierre and Marie Curie, arrived in Calcutta ablaze with glory.

Balaram was thirty-six at the time. He was working as a sub-editor on the Amrita Bazar Patrika, which was still, at that time, Calcutta’s best English newspaper. He had been working there for close on fourteen years, ever since he left college, so he was fairly well known in the office then. That was probably why he was allowed to go to the airport with the staff reporter that day.

Of course, Balaram had planned for the day ever since the papers had announced the date of the Joliot-Curies’ arrival in Calcutta on their way back from the Science Congress in Delhi. There were other scientific stars scheduled to arrive on the same day: Frédéric Joliot, Irène Joliot-Curie’s husband, with whom she had shared her Nobel; J. D. Bernal, the English physicist later to win the Nobel himself; Sir Robert Robinson, distinguished chemist and president of the Royal Society.

But in that whole gathering of luminaries there was only one person Balaram wanted to see and that was Madame Irène Joliot-Curie. He had read about the Curies since he was thirteen. Radium had powered the fantasies of his adolescence; he had celebrated Marie Curie’s second Nobel with fireworks. For him Irène Curie was a legend come alive, a part of the secret world of his boyhood, an embodiment of the living tradition of science. He would have gladly given up his job only to see her.

On 9 January, two days before she was scheduled to arrive, Balaram went to the news editor and asked permission to go to the airport with the staff reporter. It’ll help, he said in explanation, with the subbing of the story and the headlines. The news editor, always busy, hardly looked up: Yes, of course, do what you like. But on the tenth Balaram went to him again, just to make sure. Yes, yes, the news editor snapped, didn’t I say so?

The eleventh was bitterly cold by Calcutta’s sultry standards; the coldest day the city had had in years. Balaram wrapped himself up carefully in two sweaters, an overcoat and a new muffler. At Dum-Dum airport two of his childhood heroes were pointed out to him in the waiting crowd, the physicists Meghnad Saha and Satyen Bose. But Balaram, busy scanning the skies, hardly noticed them. When he spotted the silvery Dakota with the Star Lines emblem painted on its wings, he hopped about flapping his overcoat, almost beside himself. The staff reporter, long accustomed to the famous, said quite sharply: Can’t you stand still for a moment?

Madame Joliot-Curie climbed out first, wrapped in a grey overcoat, with a cloth bag in one hand. She was taller than he had expected, with clearly drawn jowls, grizzled hair and bright, sharp eyes. Her husband came out next, smiling, his tie tucked into his crumpled trousers. And then came J. D. Bernal, dapper, elegant, hat in hand, exuding ease and grace. Balaram tried not to look at him. But of course it wasn’t his fault. The difference between him and Irène Joliot-Curie was not the difference between two individuals. It lay outside either of them; it was a geographical difference, a spatial difference, the difference of two opposed traditions — one which produced Louis Pasteur, battling himself into paralysis, and Marie Curie’s revolutionary fervour, and another which turned out these clever, passionless, elegant sleepwalkers. (He was wrong about J. D. Bernal, of course, but he didn’t know it then.)

Balaram pressed forward with the reporters, towards the three figures standing by the plane on the runway. Faintly he heard one of the reporters remark to Professor Joliot that they looked tired.

We flew over high altitudes, Professor Joliot said in answer, over 9000 feet, and this has somewhat told on us. He turned to his wife and smiled. She nodded, running the back of her hand across her forehead. With an electric thrill of excitement Balaram saw that she was looking straight at him.

Balaram knew that he had to say something. He knew Professor Joliot was wrong; 9000 feet wouldn’t tire a Curie. The Curies lived in the highest reaches of the imagination.

Balaram strained eagerly forward, brushing a shock of his springy black hair off his eyes. But, sir, he said loudly, hardly aware of what he was saying, are you not accustomed to keeping high altitudes?

It was only a silly impulse; he knew that the moment he said it. It meant nothing. But it was too late. There was a moment’s awkward silence and then everyone, led by Professor Joliot, burst into laughter. Even Madame Joliot-Curie smiled.

For Balaram each peal of that laughter carried the sting of a whiplash. He turned, humiliation smarting in his eyes. They were all the same, all the same, those scientists. It was something to do with their science. Nothing mattered to them — people, sentiments, humanity. He pushed his way through the crowd and ran and ran till he reached Dum-Dum village.

Back in Calcutta he wandered down the roaring traffic of Dharmotolla, away from the buses and trams of the Esplanade. He could not bear the thought of compounding his humiliation by going back to the office or facing Toru-debi at home. He went where his feet led him, and inevitably they took him to College Street. Soon, chewing acidly on his humiliation, he was back among the familiar crumbling plaster façades and the tinkling bells of trams; the students pushing their way to bus-stops and the rows of stalls piled high with secondhand books. A little way from the wrought-iron gates of Presidency College he absent-mindedly picked up and paid for a tattered old book. It was called Practical Phrenology.

He walked down to the Dilkhusha Cabin in Harrison Street, found a quiet table and ordered a cup of tea. After a while he opened the book and desultorily skimmed over a few pages. Then, with gathering excitement, he began to read.

At four o’clock he took a tram to the High Court. Gopal was busy in his chambers, but Balaram dragged him out to a roadside tea-stall run by a Bihari, in the Strand. Look, he said, handing him the book. Look what I’ve found.

Gopal was not particularly pleased at being pulled out of his chambers at a quarter past four in the afternoon, especially since he had an important tax suit coming up the next day. He fingered through the book, looked at the photographs of typical criminal types with distaste and handed it back to Balaram.

Balaram, he said warily, you’ve never studied science. You know nothing of anatomy. People like you and me just don’t know enough about these things. We should leave them alone.

How does that matter? said Balaram. There are ideas in science like anything else. Do you ever tell me to stop reading history? Do I ever tell you to stop reading novels?

Gopal looked at his watch. It was four-thirty and he was late. To me, he said, this looks like rubbish.

Don’t you see? said Balaram, stuttering with excitement, eyes blazing. Haven’t I always told you? What’s wrong with all those scientists and their sciences is that there’s no connection between the outside and the inside, between what people think and how they are. Don’t you see? This is different. In this science the inside and the outside, the mind and the body, what people do and what they are, are one. Don’t you see how important it is?

I think, said Gopal stolidly, that if you must keep on with this science business you’d better go to hear Madame Curie this evening when she opens the Institute of Nuclear Physics. And now I have to go.

Balaram did go to hear her, and so did Gopal. They stood far back in the crowd, behind cheering groups of schoolchildren and college students, and watched her cut the tape. She looked incongruous, surrounded by ministers and governors and petty pomp — a simple housewifely figure in a plain dress. Balaram listened intently as she began to speak of the importance of nuclear physics and the new chapter in the prosperity of mankind it had opened.

But then Gopal dug him in the ribs and winked, unkindly reminding him of a little defeat. Once, about three and a half years ago, a harassed chief sub had asked Balaram to compose a banner headline. After a good deal of hard thought he came up with: Nuclear bomb dropped — Hiroshima disappears. The chief sub had not thought it fit to print. ‘A-bomb’, he said, was better than ‘nuclear’ (it was some years before the paper worked out a house style on the matter). And anyway Balaram had chosen the wrong type-case. It rankled absurdly for years.

Balaram looked hard at Madame Curie and, soon after, he left without a word to Gopal. Next morning, he was on his way up to the newsroom when a man stopped him. He was a youngish man, not past his late twenties, Balaram judged, dressed in grey trousers and a blue sweater. Could you tell me where the advertising department is? he asked nervously. His Bengali had a slight but distinct rural slur.

Why? Balaram said, and smiled.

Reassured by his friendliness the young man invited him out for a cup of tea. Balaram went, glad of an excuse to put off his entry into the newsroom. When they were sitting at the tea-stall the young man showed Balaram his advertisement. He wanted a teacher for a primary school in a village called Lalpukur, about a hundred miles north of Calcutta, near the border.

It was a very new settlement, the young man explained. Most of the villagers were refugees from the east. His was the only family which owned land in the area.

And where are you from, sir? he asked Balaram.

I’m from East Bengal, too, Balaram said. From Dhaka.

I see, he said. A few of the villagers are from there as well.

Anyway, he went on, after finishing with his bachelor’s degree in science he had trained as a schoolteacher. Now that the time had come to find a job, he had decided to start a school of his own instead — in Lalpukur where it was really needed and where he could keep an eye on his land. It would be both an income and something worthwhile. Besides, why work for someone else when you could work for yourself?

But he needed another teacher — he wouldn’t be able to handle it all on his own. He looked at Balaram, his eyes shining with enthusiasm: You’ll never believe how eager those children are to learn.

When Balaram left the young man and went up to the newsroom, he was greeted with slow handclaps and broad smiles. He discovered that a number of that morning’s papers had carried his question to Frédéric Joliot — and the answering laughter — in their reports.

He applied for a day’s leave at once and walked out of the office. He walked down to the Hooghly, hugging his sweaters around him, and watched the boats sailing languidly down the river. He stood there all afternoon and then went down to the High Court.

Gopal was patient with him that day, for Balaram’s terrible distress was stamped large on him. They went for a long walk across the green expanse of the Maidan. Halfway across Balaram stopped and waved a hand at the tall buildings and snarling traffic of Chowringhee. In a place like this, he said, people can’t think about the difference between what they are and what they ought to be. Nothing can change people here. Not science, or history, or reason. Nothing. Nothing could ever be taught here. Not really; not so that it changed anything.

But what makes you think, said Gopal, that you could teach?

I’ve been reading the book I showed you, Balaram answered. Look — he ran his hands over the upper parts of his temples and the sides of his head — look: Hope, Wonder, Ideality and Firmness. What could make a better teacher?

He went back home and for ten days he battled with Toru-debi. A week later they were in Lalpukur. He only learnt the young man’s name when they reached the village. It was Bhudeb Roy.

How different Bhudeb Roy was then! His squama occipitus, even though not quite flat, was certainly not the knobbly tribute to Progeniture it became after the birth of his fifth son. Nor did he then possess those distinctive egg-like growths on Combativeness and Destructiveness above the asterion and the ear meatus.

Balaram often admitted that a good deal of his reconstruction of the young Bhudeb was mere conjecture. A long time had passed after all, and he had only just discovered phrenology when he first met Bhudeb Roy. But he had a good memory and, thinking about it later, the reason why he had taken such an immediate liking to the shy young man was obvious to him: their heads were remarkably alike at the time; almost mirror images of each other. It would have been impossible to distinguish their parietal regions, with Conscience and Hope, from each other without instruments. And he was absolutely certain that on that first day, in the tea-shop outside the Amrita Bazar Patrika office, he had seen distinct signs of a swelling on the middle of Bhudeb Roy’s frontal bone, in front of the coronal suture, right over Benevolence, and another striking growth over Ideality at the temples.

But, then, as Balaram used to say to Gopal later, a science can only tell you about things as they are; not about what they might become.

Ideality withered on Bhudeb Roy’s temples because he never really believed in anything. Even afterwards, when the organ of Order under his eyebrows bloated and grew into a bent for straight lines, he never had real passion. Balaram would have forgiven him anything if he had. But he hadn’t. Those obscene little swellings, Balaram claimed, were just funguses feeding on the dead matter of his head.

Nor, in Bhudeb Roy’s youth, were those bits of his skull immediately over and outside the obelion as distended and hideous as they were to become later.

But wait, Gopal would interrupt Balaram. You only noticed Vanity and Self-Esteem after he began hanging up his portraits all over the school.

But it wasn’t easy to interrupt Balaram once he had started on the subject. Just look at the skin around his squamous suture, he would say. It’s a monument to Acquisitiveness and Secretiveness. There Gopal would stop him firmly. He knew for certain that Balaram had begun to talk of Bhudeb Roy’s Acquisitive organ, on the upper edge of the front half of the squamous suture, only after he discovered that Bhudeb Roy was taking fifty rupees for himself from the parents of each child he admitted to the school. And as for Secretiveness, on the posterior part of the squamous suture, he had no doubt that Balaram had noticed that long after he heard that Bhudeb Roy had another steady trickle of money flowing in from the police station in the next village, in exchange for secret monthly reports on almost everybody in Lalpukur. It’s only natural, Balaram explained to him once. Lalpukur is a border town and the police are given money from their headquarters to get information. If they didn’t spend it somehow, the funds would lapse and they’d have to go without their own cuts. Besides, it has to be said of them that they’ve proceeded on sound phrenological principles in choosing Bhudeb Roy to be their informer: his cranial capacity is enormous — there can’t be any doubt that he’s as clever as a fox — and he has exactly the right kind of squamous suture.

But, Gopal objected, you only noticed his squamous suture after you heard about his links with the police. What comes first, then, the act or the organ?

Balaram did not give him a proper answer. Instead he said: But tell me, is any of it untrue?

And then Gopal was reduced to silence. He had met Bhudeb Roy on his first visit to Lalpukur, soon after Balaram had moved there. He had looked like a fairly ordinary young man then, with thinning hair and a large pleasant face. He was stout even then but far from fat, and in his starched white dhoti and kurta he had even possessed a certain kind of grace.

When Gopal saw him years later he had flinched, as anybody would on seeing for the first time that huge slab-like face nodding upon the rolls of flesh of a massively swollen neck. The sockets of his eyes had bulged forward as though to startle a hangman, but curiously the eyes themselves had shrunk into tiny, opaque, red-flecked circles. His mouth had grown into a yawning, swallowing, spittle-encrusted chasm, stretching across the entire width of his huge jaw. His upper lip had shrunk away altogether, while his lower lip had looped upward almost to the tip of his nose. His head was bare and shiny, except for a few limp hairs which he combed vainly over the gnarled swellings on the sides of his head. His ears stuck out of his head at right angles and waved occasionally like banana leaves in a breeze. His body had changed, too — his legs had become two dimpled pillars of flesh and his arms had shot forward till they dangled at his knees. And above it all, for Bhudeb Roy was usually prone, rose his stomach, surging turbulently above him in an engorged, hairy mass, straining at the thin cotton of his kurta.

It was not till he discovered criminology, Balaram claimed, that he found a science adequate to Bhudeb Roy. And even Gopal had to admit that there was a remarkable resemblance between Lombroso’s photographs of voluminous jaws and peaked zygomatic arches, of razor-like upper lips and sadly delinquent beetle eyes, and parts of Bhudeb Roy’s physiognomy. No wonder, Balaram said, the police chose him.

But Balaram’s discovery was to become a dilemma. Soon after he showed those photographs to Gopal, Bhudeb Roy arrived in his house one evening to ask a favour of him. There was nothing unusual in that. Balaram had always been polite to Bhudeb Roy for the sake of the school. And Bhudeb Roy, for his part, had always had a great respect for Balaram’s learning, a respect he never lost. At that time he even had what Gopal, for one, took to be a deep affection for Balaram. But Balaram himself thought otherwise. No, he told Gopal once, all his attempts at kindness, all those little things he always does for me, have nothing to do with me. They’re just a part of his regret for his own lost youth.

Bhudeb Roy came to Balaram’s house because a sixth son had recently been born to him. The astrologers had already seen the boy, he confided to Balaram swaying his gnarled head forward, but their prognostications were not good, and he was worried. The palmists would be no use until the boy’s hands grew a bit. In the meantime, he said, drawing his rubbery lower lip back in a smile, I may as well have phrenology. After all, it’s scientific, and I’m a man of the future. Let it not be said that Bhudeb Roy hung back when the opportunity to have the first phrenologized baby in Bengal, perhaps in Asia, was at hand.

Balaram answered him with vague mumbles. His first instinct, knowing what he did about the hereditary nature of the criminal physiology, was to refuse. What would he say to Bhudeb if his son was exactly like him?

And just then Bhudeb smiled again and said reassuringly: You’ll like the little swine — he’s just like me.

But at the same time Balaram was flattered. It was the first time he had been consulted like a doctor or a surgeon. In a way it was more than a triumph for his science — it was a personal victory. Besides, Bhudeb would be terribly offended if he refused.

So he agreed (later he was to hit himself so hard on his troublesome Vanity that his scalp bled).

The next day, without telling Toru-debi, Balaram packed his instruments in a bag, along with a copy of Combe for reference, and walked over to Bhudeb Roy’s house, a little way down the path which ran past his own house. Bhudeb Roy was lying flat on his back on a mat under a mango tree in his garden. His stomach billowed above him like a sail in a high wind, while he fanned it gently with a palm leaf. He struggled to his feet when he saw Balaram. Followed by his five sons he led Balaram into his newly built, peacock-green house.

Balaram knew the worst as soon as he saw the child in its cradle, shrieking with rage at being woken from its evening sleep. Somehow he found the heart to go through the motions of a perfunctory examination. It was difficult, for the child, thoroughly resentful at being handled by a stranger, screamed and clawed at him with an ominous strength. Finally he wetted Balaram’s shirt, and Balaram almost dropped him. He stopped then and washed his hands and put away his instruments. He had seen enough.

Well? said Bhudeb Roy as he led him out, smiling indulgently. What do you think? Then he saw Balaram’s grim face and stopped short.

What’s the matter? he cried. Balaram-babu, tell me quickly, what’s the matter? Balaram walked straight on, without a word. Wait, Bhudeb Roy shouted after him, Balaram-babu, wait. Have some tea, biscuits, fish, dinner, anything …

Balaram walked straight on, down the garden, towards the dirt path, frowning. Bhudeb Roy hurried behind him waddling, pulling up the folds of his dhoti. His five sons ran out behind him. Wait, he cried again plaintively. Tell me, Balaram-babu, what is it?

Balaram stopped only when he was halfway to his own house. When Bhudeb Roy caught up with him, panting in great shuddering sighs, Balaram said: Bhudeb-babu, I don’t know how to tell you this. I beg that you will not misunderstand. The exhibit, that is to say your son, has distinct protuberances above the asterion and over the temporal muscles above its ears. Furthermore, his mandible and zygomatic arches are already developed to so extraordinary a degree that I can only tell you, with the utmost regret, that he reproduces almost exactly the structure of the Typical Homicidal. With careful nurture you may perhaps be able to hold him down to mere felony, but no further, I fear, no further. Pray, Bhudeb-babu, for I know you believe in prayer, pray that you may not be his first victim.

Balaram turned, lean and erect, his cloud of white hair lifting in the breeze, and walked away while Bhudeb Roy sank to the dust with a punctured cry.

Next morning Toru-debi woke to find that six of their coconut palms had been axed and all their lemon trees uprooted during the night. Nonder-ma, who always knew, told her the whole story.

When she had heard her through, Toru-debi went to the middle of the courtyard. She stood, legs apart, holding a huge stone pestle above her head, and shouted: Listen, you. If I ever hear again that you’ve gone out of this house with those instruments, there’ll be nothing left in your study. Those books have cursed you, and now you’re trying to drag me down with you. But I won’t go.

Balaram did not leave his study or even acknowledge that he had heard her. There were times, he knew, when Combativeness ruled her so completely that argument was futile. Those were the times when it was best to do as she said.

After that Balaram’s evening walks around the village with his Claws and his bag of instruments ceased. The notebooks of observations of over three hundred of the village’s living heads that he had so carefully compiled in a decade’s painstaking work were frozen. Balaram’s study became a prison and his evenings would not pass.

On those long evenings, Balaram tried to see the matter rationally, but he could not find it in himself to forgive Bhudeb Roy. But there was little he could do: reason is not a good weapon with which to wreak revenge.

What Bhudeb Roy made of the incident was a mystery. When Toru-debi made Balaram go with her to his house a month later to offer condolences after his baby son had died of double pneumonia, he was as courteous to Balaram as he ever was. But Balaram was not deceived. He saw Combativeness growing on the back of Bhudeb Roy’s head like a new potato, and secretly he was afraid.

About a year later Alu arrived in Lalpukur.

So, in an odd way, Bhudeb Roy was partly responsible for the surge of enthusiasm with which Balaram greeted Alu. The moment he saw him Balaram knew his evenings would never be empty again.

Though a long time passed before the boy would let Balaram examine him, once they started he grew to enjoy his sessions with Balaram almost as much as Balaram did himself. To eliminate all taint of the haphazard, Balaram worked out a timetable for the examinations. Since Alu was in the fourth class of the Lalpukur school then, Balaram scheduled his examinations early in the morning, before school, three times a week, and after school another three times a week, with holidays on Sundays. The timetable, with the days shuffled around for variety every week, was pinned up on the door of Balaram’s study late every Sunday evening. But neither he nor Alu paid it much attention. Alu was always somewhere in Balaram’s study in those days — rummaging around in the bookshelves, leafing through books in some dusty corner, or often just dozing, leaning against the easy chair’s clawed legs.

Balaram could not have hoped for a better subject. But still something worried him.

It may be his bregma, he told Gopal. He’s so completely impassive. Nothing, nothing at all, seems to make an impression on him.

They were sitting at a grimy marble-topped table in Nizam’s Restaurant, behind the New Market in Calcutta. The waiters in their lungis were making so much noise running between the tables and the kitchen outside that Gopal had to lean forward to hear Balaram clearly.

He’s still just a boy, Balaram, he said, prodding a kebab with his forefinger. You can’t expect him to be as enthusiastic about phrenology as you are.

But Balaram was still worried. It wasn’t natural for a boy of ten to be quite so impassive. Alu betrayed no emotion about anything at all. It was obvious, for instance, that in his impassive way he hated school — if there could be such a thing as an impassive hatred. He never opened a schoolbook, never wrote so much as a word in his hard-bound exercise-book. He went off to school obediently enough, but always hanging back, as though waiting for a miracle to strike the school off the fields of Lalpukur.

It was already a matter of deep embarrassment to Balaram, and it would be worse if his own nephew, studying in the very school he was teaching in, were to fail in the examinations. Bhudeb Roy, whose sons somehow always won all the prizes the school offered, never let Balaram forget it. Not very bright, that boy Alu, he would say, is he, Balaram-babu? Perhaps you should beat him a bit?

Balaram would look straight at him until his opaque little eyes shifted.

The trouble was that he was bright, even if it wasn’t immediately apparent. There could be no doubt about it. He had to have some intelligence to read as much as he did.

How much he read! Far too much, in fact, for a boy of ten. He would read almost anything he happened to come across in Balaram’s study: history, geography, geology, natural history, biology … Anything at all. And not just in Bengali. It had taken him amazingly little time to learn English. And then Balaram had tried to teach him a little French the same way he had learnt it himself, from a grammar and a pocket dictionary. Alu had proved so quick in learning that Balaram had decided not to teach him any more for fear of confusing him. But then one day he had found him reading a French primer on his own, with the help of the pocket dictionary.

He had learnt to speak a number of languages, too. Cycle-shop Bolai, who had once served in the Army somewhere in the north, had taught him Hindi. And he was fluent in the villagers’ dialect, which Balaram, after sixteen years in Lalpukur, could barely understand.

Most of the people of Lalpukur belonged originally to the remote district of Noakhali, in the far east of Bengal close to Burma. They had emigrated to India in a slow steady trickle in the years after East Bengal became East Pakistan. Most of them had left everything but their dialect behind. It was a nasal sing-song Bengali, with who knew what mixed in of Burmese and the languages of the hills to the east. Many of them had learnt the speech of West Bengal, but it had only made their own dialect more dear to them — as a mark of common belonging and as a secret weapon to confuse strangers with. It was their claim that it was impossible for anyone born outside Noakhali to understand their speech when they spoke fast. And yet after only two years Alu spoke it so fluently that the whole village had learnt to be careful not to talk about Balaram when he passed by.

But always impassive, never betraying so much as a trace of emotion. Perhaps, said Balaram, ruminating, I could try massaging him on the occipital bone where the emotions and sentiments are.

Balaram! Gopal exclaimed. You leave his occipital bone or whatever alone. You’re imagining things. Toru told me herself when we were last in Lalpukur that he’s had trouble in school because of his devotion to you. That’s an emotion. Gopal put his glass of water down and looked accusingly at Balaram. Balaram nodded reluctantly.

Once, on his way out of the school in the afternoon, Balaram heard shouts and wild laughter in a classroom. He stopped, for the school was meant to be empty at that time of the afternoon. It was soon apparent that the noise was coming from his own classroom. As he was walking back, it grew from scattered shouts into a high-pitched schoolboy chant: Balaram’s dog, Balaram’s dog …

The boys in the classroom scattered as soon as he entered. He saw four of Bhudeb Roy’s sons tumbling out of the windows. But the fifth, a squat, paunchy boy with a sprouting moustache, stood his ground in the middle of a pile of overturned benches and looked straight at him, with a curling smile. Then he turned and sauntered out of the room, whistling. Balaram saw that he had a deep gash across his cheek.

Then Balaram saw Alu, sprawled on the floor, tied to an upturned bench. His chin had split open and his nose was dripping blood. Balaram had to cut him free with a blade. As they came out of the school, Balaram heard a shout: Balaram’s dog — follow him home. He turned, but all he saw was a flash of feet disappearing into the bamboo.

But, said Balaram, the strange thing was that even then he didn’t say a word. He didn’t cry or even complain. The whole thing seemed to have no effect on him at all.

Maybe, said Gopal meditatively, maybe he’s still trying to get over the shock of losing his parents.

Balaram dropped his kebab in astonishment. He stared at Gopal. I hadn’t thought of that, he said at last.

No, said Gopal. You wouldn’t.

When Balaram got back to Lalpukur that evening, Alu was sitting in a corner of his study reading. Once he was comfortably settled in his easy chair, Balaram called out to him. Alu came up to him and proffered his skull. He was a little puzzled because it was Sunday, and a holiday.

No, said Balaram, not today. He patted the arm of his chair, and Alu jumped on to it.

Alu, said Balaram shyly, one mustn’t brood on the past. One ought to think of the future. The future is what is important. The past doesn’t matter. One can do anything with the future. One can change the world.

He scanned the boy’s face. Alu, he said, don’t you want to change the world? The boy looked at him steadily, his eyes larger than ever, saying nothing.

How can one change the world, Balaram said, if one has no passion?

The boy did not respond. Suddenly Balaram felt himself strangely touched by the boy’s wide-eyed silence. He felt his throat constrict, and in embarrassment he reached for the copy of Vallery-Radot’s Life of Pasteur which always lay beside his chair, and began to read him the chapter about that turning-point in the history of the world — 6 July 1885 — when Louis Pasteur took his courage in his hands and at the risk of his reputation and his whole professional life (for he had never lacked for enemies) filled a Pravoz syringe and inoculated poor, hopeless ten-year-old Joseph Meister, only that day savaged by a rabid dog, with his still untested vaccine.

When he stopped and put the book down he saw tears in Alu’s eyes.

Perhaps I was wrong, Balaram said to Gopal a week later. Perhaps his occipital bone is all right. Still, I must make sure.

He never did make sure. He forgot for a few days, and after that he couldn’t have even if he had remembered. But by then he would probably not have thought it necessary anyway.

That was the week of the autumn harvest. Bhudeb Roy, who had planted a new high-yielding seed, had a magnificent harvest that year. It was a very cheap harvest, too, for three classes of schoolboys did most of his harvesting, on pain of being failed in their examinations. There was a good reason for it, he explained, when Balaram protested feebly. It was a part of the botany practicals — the Lalpukur school had always believed in a judicious mixture of practical and theoretical knowledge.

Otherwise, too, it was a good year for Bhudeb Roy. He didn’t have to spend any money on the school’s annual prizegiving because his five sons shared the prizes between them. He had had another son, and this time the astrologers were quite encouraging.

So good was his fortune that a twinge of superstition led him to announce to the school that in thanksgiving he — in other words, the school — would hold an exceptionally lavish Saraswati Puja that year. What could be a more appropriate festival for a school than that of the Goddess of Learning?

But, Balaram discovered, Bhudeb Roy’s motives were not wholly spiritual. He also intended to invite and suitably impress the district’s Inspector of Schools. If he was successful, anything was possible — a grant, an appointment …

And so Bhudeb Roy set about organizing his triumphal feast. A six-foot image of Ma Saraswati, with spinning electric lights behind the eyes and a silver-foil halo, was commissioned in Naboganj, the nearest large town. Bolai-da, who had once been on a kitchen detail in the Army, closed down his cycle-shop and took charge of the cooking. Two goats and a pondful of fish were fattened for the feast. A large multi-coloured tent, with a low platform for the image, was erected in the schoolyard, and the most learned pandit in Naboganj was hired to preside over the ceremony.

So splendid were the preparations that Bhudeb Roy did not have the heart to restrict his special invitations to the Inspector of Schools. Eventually he sent invitations to all the important officials in the district: the District Magistrate, the Superintendent of Police, and even the Block Development Officer. He had a vision of a sparkling row of official jeeps parked outside the school.

Of course, he had to invite Balaram, too, for the sake of propriety (and the Inspector of Schools was bound to ask to meet the other teachers in the school).

Bhudeb Roy was a little disappointed when the day came. Only the Inspector of Schools arrived, and that, too, by bus and covered with dust. But by then he was enjoying himself too much to let a minor reverse upset him unduly. He showed the Inspector of Schools to a special chair and busied himself herding cowering groups of scrubbed schoolboys into the tent. His five sons, who had been armed with bamboo poles for the occasion, were equally busy outside, keeping the villagers — all but an approved few — out.

When the lights were switched on, a few people noticed that Ma Saraswati, usually so serenely beautiful, seated on her white swan, with her eight-stringed veena in one hand and a book in the other, looked a little pained. But no one dared say anything and, in any case, in all that bustle no one had time to give it much thought.

Balaram left his house late. Toru-debi was busy with a new design for seamless petticoats, and she had flatly refused to go. Balaram had no wish to go, either, or so he said, but duty prodded and he had had no alternative but to respond.

The ceremony had started when he arrived at the school. Standing outside the tent, he could hear the pandit droning inside. He took a deep breath and stepped in.

For a breathless moment he stood frozen, his eyes riveted to the image. Then he raised his hand and shouted: Wait!

The startled pandit stopped in mid-mantra, his mouth open. In the crackling silence everybody turned and followed his pointing fingers to Ma Saraswati’s head, brightly lit from the inside. There was no denying that she looked distinctly migrained. (It was simple really: Bhudeb Roy, unable to resist the temptation to save a few paise, had refused to pay for special insulation for the lights inside the image’s head, and as a result the clay had buckled when the lights were switched on.)

But everybody’s eyes were on Balaram now. He shouted again: Wait! Then he ran across the tent and, with dirty, defiling sandals still on his feet, he leapt on to the platform. The pandit fainted away from shock.

Balaram paused for a moment, his hand poised over the image’s head. Then he ripped the dyed cotton hair off the head and laid the clay skull bare. He pointed to the peeled head with the light still bravely flickering inside and turned around. This, he said to the electrified crowd, is not Saraswati.

This is not Learning, he said, knocking the clay with his knuckles. This is Vanity.

The scraping of the Inspector of Schools’ chair tore through the silence. He stalked out without so much as a glance at Bhudeb Roy. Bhudeb Roy called off the ceremony, and people said that he didn’t swallow a morsel at the feast afterwards.

You were taking revenge, Gopal accused Balaram later. So you deserved what happened next.

No, Balaram protested. It was just the truth. It was Vanity, precisely where it ought to be, outside the obelion.

But, at the time, even truth was no consolation.

The morning after the ceremony Toru-debi went down to their pond for her morning bath and found it covered with poisoned fish. At almost exactly the same time, Alu, who was eating in the kitchen, heard screams in the bamboo forest behind their house. He pushed away his brass thala and ran out of the house by the back door.

A path ran from the back door past the well, through dense stands of bamboo to three solitary huts nestled in a dip, a long way off. Those were the huts in which Maya Debnath lived with her father and her brother. She walked down that path every morning, on her way to Balaram’s house.

Alu raced down the path trying to make as little noise as he could. He heard the voices again. One of them was Maya’s, shrill with fear. Alu left the path and circled round, through the bamboo, towards the sound.

Then he saw them: Maya was standing in the middle of the path, surrounded by Bhudeb Roy’s five sons. The youngest, barely six, was clinging to his oldest brother’s shorts.

Maya was eleven then, a few months younger than Alu, but a good head taller and sturdily built. She had a red sari wound around her, covering her budding breasts. It was an old shrunken piece of cloth, and it fell well short of her ankles and left her shoulders bare. She had a six-foot length of bamboo in her hands. Her firm, rounded face and her gently slanting eyes were dark with anger. She had the pole steady in her hands, pointed at the eldest boy. But he could see that she was afraid: sweat glistened on her chin and her bare shoulders.

Bhudeb Roy’s eldest son, circling outside the range of the pole, said, threatening her with his bunched fists: Don’t make trouble. Listen to me. Don’t go to that house again. If you do, there’ll be trouble for you and your father.

Maya spat back: Why don’t you try to stop me? All you’ll have is a hole in your babu shorts where it hurts.

Alu stopped only for a moment. Then he ran, throwing himself through the bamboo thickets, towards the three huts where Maya lived.

Maya’s family were weavers. Her brother, Rakhal, was only sixteen, but already among the tallest in the village, and known everywhere for his skill with the bamboo pole. He had a special one for serious fights, studded with nails. He had made it himself, after a fight in which his cheek had been opened with a knife. He still bore the scar. Usually it was hardly visible, for Rakhal was by nature a gentle, dreamy boy. But when he was angry the scar would open up and glow an unearthly bloody crimson.

Alu found him sitting at his loom, tugging at the strings of the shuttle in mechanical boredom. Alu pulled him up and pointed to his fighting-pole beside the loom. He tried to speak but, panting, couldn’t find his breath. Rakhal looked at his wild eyes and he needed no telling. He leapt up, gathering his lungi around his waist, threw his fighting-pole over his shoulder and ran, with Alu close on his heels.

From a distance they saw Bhudeb Roy’s eldest son snatching at one end of Maya’s pole. They saw the other boys throw themselves on Maya and they saw her go down, struggling under their weight. Then Rakhal roared and his pole flailed in the air, whistling like a kite-string in a gale. The boys looked up and they saw him, bearing down on them with his pole in his hands and his livid scar shining like a pennant, and the next moment they were running and Maya was picking herself slowly off the dust.

Rakhal, balked, stood looking after them as they crashed through the thickets of bamboo, and spat into the dust. He glanced at Maya to make sure that she was unhurt and turned back towards their huts, leaving Alu alone with her.

Alu, suddenly overcome with embarrassment, dug his hands into his shorts and began walking quickly towards their house. Maya followed close behind. When she was a step behind him, she laughed: Why did you have to call him? Were you afraid? Alu’s steps quickened, but she was right behind him. Were you afraid? Why don’t you say, little babu? Alu, walking stiff-legged, almost running, could not bear it any more. He broke into a run and disappeared into the house.

When Maya reached the house, Toru-debi, only just returned from the pond and its carpet of dead fish, was standing in the courtyard listening to Nonder-ma. She saw Maya dishevelled and covered with dust and beckoned to her.

After she had heard the whole story, Toru-debi went to the well and bathed. She oiled and combed her hair and dressed herself in a new sari. And then, armed with all the powers of cleanliness, she marched into Balaram’s study.

Without a word to Balaram she began tipping his books out of the bookshelves. Balaram did not even try to stop her. He stalked silently out of the study and shut himself up in his bedroom.

Even with Maya and Nonder-ma’s help, it took Toru-debi a long time to carry the books out into the courtyard. But she did a thorough job. At the end of it the study was as empty as a dry eggshell. Not a leaf of paper nor a scrap of binding remained to remind Balaram of his library.

Then, after sprinkling kerosene over the huge mound of books in the courtyard, Toru-debi struck a match and set them alight. Alu, standing behind a door, watched the crackling flames dance around the mound. Then he spotted something and darted forward. Toru-debi saw him, and shouted: What have you got in your hands?

Alu backed away, his hands behind his back, as she bore down on him. She lunged, but he managed to sway out of her reach. Then he heard Maya’s voice, close to his ear: Give it to me. A sari rustled and he felt the warm, sweet firmness of her breasts against his shoulder.

When Toru-debi caught up with him his hands were empty. Maya had disappeared.

That night, when all that was left of Balaram’s books was a pile of ashes and a few charred bindings scattered around the courtyard, Alu crept into Balaram’s room. Balaram was sitting crumpled in his easy chair, his fingers in his hair. Alu climbed on to the arm of his easy chair and slipped a book out of his shorts into Balaram’s lap. Then he put his arms around his neck.

It was the Life of Pasteur.

This time the tears were Balaram’s.

Chapter Two. A Pasteurized Cosmos

Eventually, Assistant Superintendent of Police Jyoti Das heard about it all. Bhudeb Roy told him about Balaram’s doings at the Saraswati Puja in the course of a rambling and slightly nostalgic account of Balaram’s life in Lalpukur. Though ten years had passed, he remembered the incident graphically.

It was the first sign, Bhudeb Roy said, of Balaram’s deterioration. He said it a little regretfully, for even then, after all that had happened, he could never speak of Balaram without respect. But he remembered that he was talking to an AS of Police and why, so he added: But he was always like that — confused. A confused extremist. It took me many years to find out, and by that time it was too late. He was set in his dangerous ways. An extremist; no respect for order. A terribly confused extremist.

ASP Das was tired and a little bewildered after all that had happened that day. It was the first time, as he told his mother afterwards, that he had drawn his gun in earnest, meaning to kill. Of course, they had all been trained to deal with situations like that at the Police Academy. But it was different somehow when it actually happened. With un-officerly embarrassment he had noticed his wrists shaking long before he had fired a shot, and despite himself he couldn’t help being glad that he had not actually had to use the gun. He had hardly expected that one flare would do the whole job for him. He noticed Bhudeb Roy’s huge face again with a start and sat up. But, Bhudeb-babu, he said, if you thought so then, why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you make him leave the village?

You don’t understand, Bhudeb Roy said. You don’t understand, Superintendent-shaheb (Assistant, Assistant, Jyoti Das protested). There was little I could do. By then he was part of the village. He’d been here sixteen years, and as a schoolmaster, too. He had a house here. What could I do? Who knows what the villagers would have done if I’d tried to push him out of Lalpukur? You know how they are — simple …

Jyoti Das looked at that vast, bloated face with its little squinting eyes and clamp-like jaws and he flinched inwardly. He had had no alternative but to accept Bhudeb Roy’s ‘co-operation’ and hospitality, but he could not bring himself to like the man.

Jyoti Das heard of the burning of Balaram’s books quite by chance from Gopal Dey a few months later, in a small south Calcutta police station. He liked Gopal the moment he was led into the interrogation room. Gopal was very indignant at first and full of bluster. He quoted laws and sections and sub-clauses for a good five minutes after he was brought in. But once Jyoti Das shook his hand and offered him a cup of tea Gopal sat down quietly on a straight-backed wooden chair across the desk from him. Soon he began to talk. In a few minutes Jyoti Das knew he had nothing important to say, but he listened anyway, for he liked his flustered avuncular manner. And in any case there was nothing else to do but to go back to his grimy office and listen to his boss the Deputy Inspector-General, who was something of a horticulturist, talk of carrots and cauliflowers.

So he half-listened as Gopal’s distraught mind wandered to the day Balaram had told him of his burnt books. It was 1967, and Alu was eleven then. Eleven. Jyoti Das had turned eleven in January 1964. On his birthday he was taken to the Alipore Zoo in Calcutta. His father, who was a minor revenue official, took leave from his office for the expedition (using up his last casual leave, he complained later to Jyoti’s mother).

All morning they wandered listlessly from cage to cage, staring at grimacing baboons and mangy hyenas. Jyoti’s father kept up a constant drone of complaint: about the jostling crowds and gangs of young thugs with their blaring transistors; about crawling beggars let in probably because they gave a share of their pickings to the gatemen; about the boys prodding the monkeys with sticks; about mismanagement and white tigers that had gone grey, and other miserable beasts whose increasing miscegenation was marked by names like those of ascending generations of computer chips — tigon, litigon … litiligon, titilitigon … Where would it lead? Where would it all end?

Leaving the white tigers behind, they wandered towards an area of relative peace on the far side of the lake which lay in the centre of the zoo. Jyoti’s father spotted a snack-bar near cages of wattled cassowaries and Chinese silver pheasants, with tables and chairs laid out in the shade. He seated himself at a table and motioned to Jyoti’s mother to sit. A moment later they were hit by a blast from a transistor and a group of young men danced past, holding hands and doing something between a twist and a bhangra. Two of them were fighting over a bottle of rum wrapped in a handkerchief. Inevitably, they tripped, howling with laughter, and the bottle exploded on the pavement.

Jyoti’s father, glaring, nervously wiping his forehead, muttered: Chaos; that’s all that’s left. Chaos, chaos. The note of unease in his voice caught in Jyoti’s mind, as it always did, churning up a drifting cloud of fears. He got up and ran down to the railing by the lake. There, with the chaotic surging of human life invisible behind him, he saw a shimmering, velvety carpet of ducks and cormorants and storks covering the lake. Somewhere in that mass of birds his eyes picked out a pair of purple herons with their long bills raised to the sky and their brilliantly coloured wings outstretched. He had been told that every year they flew across the continent to winter in that lake; in that lake and no other. Looking at them in the flesh he was struck with wonder, and as he watched them he gloried in the peace, the order, the serenity granted by a law on such a vast and immutable scale. He could have stayed there for hours, but soon his father’s voice was behind him: Always day-dreaming, worthless boy. Never works. He’ll never pass his examinations … And he was led away by the collar of his birthday T-shirt.

They went home and Jyoti was sent to his desk to study as usual. But that day, while he was doodling with his pencil to pass the time, he saw the lines take a new, sinuous, muscular shape. He covered one sheet, threw it away, tried another, and another until he saw quite clearly a purple heron wheeling in the sky, its neck outstretched. Then his father was back again to check: Never studies. He’ll never pass. Shame, shame for the family … But Jyoti’s drawing was already hidden away under an exercise-book. He knew it to be ordained for him to redeem his father’s failures, to do even better than all his successful uncles, the engineer in Düsseldorf, the Secretary in Delhi, and to do it by sitting for the Civil Service examinations and becoming a Class I officer — of whatever kind, in the administration, in the police, in the railways, it didn’t matter — but with his name in the Civil Service gazette and a genuine officer’s dearness allowance to guard against inflation. But he knew, too, that acquiescence could buy safety for his own, real world — for neither his father nor the Civil Service could wage war against a clear winter morning’s vision of purple herons.

Do you want the exact date? Gopal asked, for the young officer in plain clothes had straightened up suddenly. I could try to remember.

No, no, Jyoti Das said quickly. He smiled. I’m just writing a report, not a biography.

A biography?

Even Gopal, with all his love for his friend, would never have thought of writing Balaram’s biography. Once, as a joke, he had suggested it to him: Balaram, so many odd things happen to you, someone should write your biography. Maybe I will.

Balaram had thought about it quite seriously. He had pushed his hair back, and for a whole minute he sat absolutely still, with his eyes shut. Then he had said, with absolute finality: You’re wrong. Nobody could write my biography, because nothing important ever happens to me. There wouldn’t be any events to write about.

Gopal, half-offended because Balaram had taken his joke seriously, had retorted: That doesn’t matter at all. Think of Dr Johnson — nothing ever happened to him.

Balaram had smiled with total certainty, like a gifted child, and said: How could anyone write a biography of the discovery of Reason?

Gopal had said no more, but of course Balaram was wrong, and he knew it. Even Reason discovers itself through events and people.

Balaram’s birthday, for example. Nobody knew exactly when it was. His parents had never told anyone because of something their family astrologer had said after working out the newly born infant’s horoscope. All that Balaram knew was that he was born in 1914.

It was a difficult year to choose from, for Reason was embattled that year. Balaram could have chosen a date as many of his friends in college would have, to mark one of the many terrorist strikes against the British in Bengal. In distant Europe there was always the declaration of the First World War, and its assortment of massacres and butchery. Or there was the day in early August when an American judge in San Francisco, arbitrating on the second-ever application by a Hindu for citizenship in the United States, took refuge in prehistory and decided that high-caste Hindus were Aryans and therefore free and white. And, equally, there was another day in August when the colonial government in Canada rewrote a different prehistory when it turned the eight thousand Indians on board Kamagatamaru back from Vancouver, after deciding that the ancient racial purity of Canada could not be endangered by Asiatic immigration. Or, at much the same time, there was the date of the launching of a drive by the imperial government to recruit Indians for an expeditionary force to join Algerians and Vietnamese and Senegalese in defending the freedom of the Western world from itself.

But Balaram chose none of those dates. Even reading about them he suffered, for he saw them as abysses tearing apart the path of Man’s ascent to Reason. Instead, he vacillated between any one of several dozen days in May and June when Jagadish Chandra Bose, in a laboratory in south London, demonstrated to stunned audiences of scientists and poets and politicians, all half-deafened by the ringing of sabres in Europe, that even a vegetable so unfeeling as a carrot can suffer agonies of fear and pain.

But, as Gopal said to him once, if it were not for an astrologer’s accidental remark, you wouldn’t have been able to choose your birthday.

Balaram was surprised at that. Astrology isn’t chance, he answered. It’s quite the opposite.

Again Gopal let it pass. He knew Balaram to be dissimulating: if it were not for a chance whim of his father’s, Balaram would not have discovered science at all.

Balaram was born in Dhaka, then the capital of East Bengal, now of Bangladesh. His father, who had moved to Dhaka from the little village of Medini-mandol in the nearby district of Bikrompur, was a prosperous timber merchant. He owed his prosperity to obliging relatives in Burma, who provided him with a connection with the rich Burmese teak forests. He was also very conservative. Long after their neighbours in the old Kayet-tuli quarter of Dhaka had acquired electric lights, their house was still lit by kerosene-lamps. Then suddenly, in 1927, when Balaram was thirteen, his father changed his mind and festooned their house with bulbs.

That was the turning-point, and in a way it was an accident. Had Balaram been accustomed to those bulbs with their spiral filaments from his childhood, had they arrived a year before or after he reached the enchanted age of thirteen when the whole world comes alive for the first time, they would probably never have been touched with magic. His brother, for instance, who was ten at the time, hardly gave them a moment’s thought. Not so Balaram. He was bewitched from the very first time he used one of those large, unwieldy switches. After that he couldn’t find enough to read about electricity. He read about the Chinese and Benjamin Franklin, and Edison became one of his first heroes. In school he pursued the physics teachers with questions.

But it was already too late. His teachers had decided that he had a gift for history, and this new enthusiasm for science would pass. Balaram did everything he could, but his teachers — in those days in Bengal teachers knew everything — would not let him change his subject to the sciences. So instead Balaram read.

When, at sixteen, he matriculated quite by chance with a sheaf of distinctions, his teachers decided that he must go to Presidency College in Calcutta to study history. They told him of the legend of Suniti Chatterji, the Professor of Philology, and his mastery of several dozen languages, and of a brilliant young philosopher called Radhakrishnan, only recently appointed professor (and still decades away from becoming President of the Republic).

Balaram listened to them quietly, and they took his silence for acquiescence. But Balaram was not thinking of their Calcutta at all, with its philology and philosophy and history. He had his own vision of Calcutta. For him it was the city in which Ronald Ross discovered the origin of malaria, and Robert Koch, after years of effort, finally isolated the bacillus which causes typhoid. It was the Calcutta in which Jagadish Bose first demonstrated the extraordinarily life-like patterns of stress responses in metals; where he first proved to a disbelieving world that plants are no less burdened with feeling than man.

Balaram knew of Presidency College, too: it was there that Jagadish Bose had taught two young men — Satyen Bose, who was to appropriate half the universe of elementary particles with the publication of the Bose — Einstein statistics; and Meghnad Saha, whose formulation of the likeness between a star and an atom had laid the foundation of a whole branch of astrophysics.

And of course there was the gigantic figure of C. V. Raman, whose quiet researches in the ramshackle laboratories of the Society for the Advancement of Science, in Calcutta, had led to the discovery of the effect in the molecular scattering of light which eventually came to be named after him. In 1930, when Balaram was ready to go to college, the newspapers were already talking of Raman’s candidature for the Nobel.

Long before his teachers spoke to him about it, Balaram knew that he would go to Calcutta and to Presidency College.

But his father would not hear of it. He had been brought up on tales of the wickedness of the city; and, besides, there was the expense. Dhaka, he said, had a perfectly good university and, if it was good enough for the whole of Dhaka, there was no reason why it should not be good enough for his son (and it was true that Satyen Bose was teaching there then). He didn’t understand Balaram at all. He could never have understood that Balaram was launching on a pilgrimage, a quest to retrace the steps of Jagadish Bose and Meghnad Saha from their native district of Bikrampur to Calcutta and Presidency College.

Balaram’s father would not budge, not even when one of Balaram’s teachers threatened to bombard the local and national newspapers with letters denouncing rich men who wanted to deprive young India of talent. Then chance intervened again. Riots broke out in Dhaka University that year. A lecturer’s house in their own neighbourhood was attacked by a mob.

Balaram’s father gave in at last, just in time. The day Balaram arrived in Calcutta accompanied by an uncle, the newspapers announced that C. V. Raman had won the Nobel Prize.

Balaram’s uncle took him as far as the two gatehouses outside the Eden Hindu Hostel, just off College Street, where he was to live. He looked up at the heavy ornamental brickwork of the façade, at the imperial baroque pilasters and the long rows of shuttered windows, and with a hasty blessing he abandoned Balaram.

Balaram was left to cope with his new world alone. His one consolation was that Professor C. V. Raman could not have been more than a few hundred yards away.

The interior of the Eden Hindu Hostel was even more imposing than the façade. There was an immense quadrangle in the centre with cascades of columns rising three storeys high on all sides of it. Balaram made his way round the quadrangle through a high, echoing corridor. It was terrifying after the cheerful chaos of Dhaka’s Kayet-tuli.

After wandering through the corridors for half an hour, he found his room and unpacked his luggage. He arranged the few books he had brought with him on the bookshelf and set out the jars of pickles and sweetmeats his mother had sent with him in a neat row on a windowsill. Then, pulling his dhoti up to his knees, he tiptoed to the door and looked up and down the corridor. It was empty. He stepped out and walked quickly down the corridor, trying to keep to the shadows. He slipped down the staircase and came to a corner. He hesitated for a moment, and then, making up his mind, he stiffened his back resolutely and went on. It was only after he had turned the corner, when it was already too late, that he noticed a group of students standing in the corridor. Two of them wore European clothes — baggy trousers and collarless shirts. The others were dressed as he was, in dhotis and long kurtas, but somehow their kurtas were different, smarter.

He hesitated for a moment, but they had already noticed him and he decided not to draw attention to himself by turning back. As he walked on he saw there wasn’t enough room in the corridor to slip around them. He saw that they had stopped talking and were looking at him with pointed interest. He could feel his stomach churning with nervousness.

He decided to be brave. He stepped up to them and said: Excuse me. Could you tell me where I might get a good view of Professor C. V. Raman?

The young men looked at each other in puzzlement. One of them said politely: Could you say that again, please? He was in European clothes and he had gold-rimmed spectacles and lustrous, pomaded hair, parted down the middle. He shall remain unnamed, for he was later to rise to prominence in Congress politics and achieve renown for his venality. He may still be lurking in some Calcutta suburb today.

Balaram cleared his throat: I was only asking if you could tell me where I might get a nice view of Professor C. V. Raman.

The puzzlement on their faces deepened. It occurred to Balaram that they could not understand his Dhaka accent. Stammering with embarrassment he repeated himself, very slowly.

There was a snort of laughter. Middle Parting silenced it with a wave. He said to Balaram, gravely fingering his chin: But have you bought a ticket?

A ticket?

Oh, yes. And they’re quite expensive. Anyway, why do you want to see C. V. Raman? Usually villagers want to see the High Court and the Museum first. I didn’t know C. V. Raman had appeared on the programme.

I’m from Dhaka, sir, Balaram said.

Oh, I see, said Middle Parting. Same thing. Anyway, wouldn’t you like to see the Museum and the High Court first?

Not right now, I think, Balaram said, edging away. Later perhaps. I was on my way to see …

No, wait. Middle Parting caught his elbow. But you must, you must see the Museum. How can you be in Presidency College if you haven’t seen the Museum? He winked at the others and turned back to Balaram: And how can you see the Museum without Museum practice?

There was a snort of laughter. Balaram looked at him in surprise: Museum practice? What is that?

Middle Parting rubbed his chin. We’ll show you, he said. Free, since you’re new, though most people charge quite a lot. I hope you’re grateful.

Balaram found himself being led into the middle of the quadrangle. Middle Parting lifted Balaram’s right hand, palm outwards, and explained: That’s how you have to stand when you look at the images of the Buddha. Naturally you have to take your kurta and vest off as well. Now, please take them off.

Balaram tried to wrench his hand free. Later perhaps, he said. Maybe some other day. Thank you for so much information, but now I must go.

Take it off, Middle Parting said again. He twisted Balaram’s hand a little. Balaram threw a desperate glance around him. The others were standing in a circle around him. There was no escape. Fumbling, weak-kneed with shame, he took his kurta and vest off. His chest was pathetically bare and thin. He looked at his feet, trying not to hear their laughter.

That’s right, said Middle Parting, still grave. And then, when you go into the Greek room, you have to take the rest off as well.

There was a chorus of laughter and cheers. Balaram, horror-struck, struggled to speak, but his throat was as dry as baked clay. He managed to stammer hoarsely: I think I’ll leave Greece for next year. Thank you very much, and now, if I may …

For next year? Middle Parting pulled a face of mock-surprise. How can you be in Presidency if you leave Greece for next year?

Balaram began to back away. Middle Parting waved to the others, and with cheerful whoops they lunged at him, snatching at his dhoti. Balaram lurched as the cloth was ripped away. He fought off their hands with a desperate strength, struggling to keep a few shreds around his waist. There was only one thought in his mind: that his drawers were dirty and even death would be better than standing in the middle of that great quadrangle in dirty drawers.

It was lucky, he said afterwards, that there is so much cloth to a dhoti.

Still, it was just a matter of time. He was losing fistfuls of cloth every second.

It was at that precise moment, when Balaram was clinging to his last few wisps of white cotton, that Gopal appeared. It took Gopal no more than a glance to understand what was happening. He ran across the courtyard and flung himself at Middle Parting and his friends. Heaving with all the strength in his shoulders, he pushed two of them aside and spread his arms across Balaram. He was very angry. He shouted, his spectacles tottering on the edge of his nose: Leave him alone. Why can’t you leave these new students alone? Why don’t you go into the streets if you want to fight?

Middle Parting, laughing, dusted his hands: All right, you can play Mother to him now. Take him to see C. V. Raman. But be careful. Don’t leave him outside the laboratory. They might pour him into a test-tube. He threw his arms around his friends’ shoulders and they went away, still shaking with laughter.

Balaram stooped and spread the few shreds of cloth left to him carefully over his drawers. Gopal turned to him eagerly: C. V. Raman? Are you interested in C. V. Raman’s work? Balaram did not answer. He barely heard Gopal. He was too angry and confused.

But when at last his head cleared, and he understood Gopal’s question and sensed his elation, he knew he had a friend.

Later that day, Gopal came to fetch Balaram to take him out for a cup of tea. With him was another new student, a slight, bespectacled, shy boy from Lucknow whose two prominent front teeth had already tagged him with the name of Dantu. They went down the road to Puntiram’s sweetshop. Puntiram’s was not then the neon-and-plastic marvel it is now: it was a small place, a little tumbledown, but quiet. A good place to talk.

They ate rosogollas, sweet and spongy as only Puntiram’s could make them, and drank rich milky tea, and Gopal told them about a society he and a few others in the Eden Hindu Hostel had recently founded. Formally it was known as the Society for the Dissemination of Science and Rationalism among the People of Hindoostan, but usually they simply called themselves the Rationalists.

Balaram and Dantu pushed their dues — eight annas each — across the table the moment they had finished their tea.

Later, Gopal and Balaram were often to argue about the circumstances of their meeting. Gopal claimed that it was an accident of sorts, a mere lucky chance. Balaram argued that it could not have been. It was too apt. They would have met anyway, for the hostel was divided into five wards and Balaram and Gopal happened to be in the same ward. But no chance encounter would have been able to capture the appropriateness of their first meeting. Wasn’t the Rationalists’ motto ‘Reason rescues Man from Barbarity’?

A few days later Gopal lent Balaram a book he had recently bought at Chakerbutty & Sons in College Street. It was a copy of Mrs Devonshire’s translation of René Vallery-Radot’s Life of Pasteur.

He was to regret lending Balaram that book. A year or so later he could not have said whether he was more bewildered or hurt when the very Balaram he had rescued from barbarity, his closest friend, turned his own book, bought with his own carefully saved money, into a weapon against him.

That year Gopal was elected president of the Rationalists. He called a meeting soon after the election. It was an important meeting, for a Science Association had recently been founded in the hostel and many of the Rationalists had been tempted to change their membership. Gopal was anxious to meet the threat head-on.

The difference, Gopal told the Rationalists, between the Science Association and their own society was that they did not consider science alone, something people pursued in the seclusion of laboratories, important in itself. He himself was studying not science but English literature. Their aim was the application of rational principles to everything around them — to their own lives, to society, to religion, to history. It didn’t matter what. That was what made the Rationalists unique.

It was to that task — of applying rationalism to everything around them — that the society now had to turn. And for that he had a plan.

As a boy, Gopal went on, he had been made to read through some of the Sanskrit scriptures with his father. Later, when he began to read about science, something — he didn’t know what — had troubled him. Now that he had read much more, he had an idea of what it was: there could no longer be any doubt that there were certain very curious parallelisms between the ideas of the ancient Hindu sages and modern science. If that was true, and many very learned authorities believed it to be so, then it was definite proof that over the centuries those ancient and completely rational ideas had been perverted by scheming priests and brahmins to further their own interests. It was urgently necessary, therefore, that the society make known to the masses of Hindoostan how they were daily deceived and cheated by the self-styled purveyors of religion.

For example, it was certain that the pandits and brahmins had distorted the ancient Hindu idea of God, the Brahma, into their thousands of deities and idols, so that they could make money quicker. Just as a shopkeeper might open new counters, so each new god was a steady new source of income for the priests. As for the real Brahma, he was without attributes, without form, nothing but an essence, in everything and in nothing.

In fact, Gopal said in a sibilant whisper, the Brahma is nothing but the Atom.

Gopal stopped there and looked at his enthralled audience. There were a few inadvertent claps. He squashed them with a raised hand. And so, too, he said, it has been proved beyond all doubt that the Universal Egg of Hindu mythology is nothing but a kind of Cosmic Neutron.

He was met with a storm of cheers and claps. He smiled, luxuriating in the applause. When it had faded away, he began again: If we are to disseminate the truth we must begin here, in our own society. I propose, therefore, that we begin all our meetings hereafter with salutations and prayers to the Cosmic Atom.

There were nods of agreement all around the room. Then Balaram stood up. But you know, he said, atoms and suchlike are old-fashioned now. Ever since Professor Satyen Bose published his famous paper, all the elementary particles which obey his statistics have been renamed Bosons. Should we not, then, salute the Cosmic Boson instead?

There was a murmur of approval. Gopal nodded, a little apprehensively. Yes, he said, it’s only right that we keep up with the times.

But, said Balaram, smiling slyly, as I’m sure you’re well aware, all other particles obey Enrico Fermi’s statistics and are known as Fermions. So shouldn’t we, then, salute the Cosmic Fermion as well?

A hubbub of consternation eddied through the room. Only Dantu laughed and he was quickly quelled by a roomful of frowns. Everyone there had long since boycotted British-made and foreign goods, and many had publicly burnt every scrap of Lancashire cloth in their houses. Bosons, made in Calcutta, they could applaud; but salutations to Italian particles?

No, no, said Gopal. We can’t salute everything. I think we’d better keep to Bosons. Now, sit down, Balaram.

Balaram sat down.

Their next two meetings began with the chant: Hail to thee, O Cosmic Boson. Gopal spent half of one meeting exhorting them to begin their letters home with Hail, Cosmic Boson instead of the sacred syllable Om. Then they went through the epics and tried to find rational explanations for various magical events, objects and creatures. It was decided, for example, that the sudarshan-chakra, the legendary wheel of fire, was actually an example of ancient fireworks, and Gopal was applauded for his ingeniously down-to-earth suggestion that the mythical clawed bird of the Ramayana, Jatayu, was no early phantasm but merely one of the last surviving pterodactyls.

Balaram said nothing at either meeting. He sat in a corner with Dantu and fidgeted.

At the next meeting Gopal urged the Rationalists to turn their minds to the business of finding a rational substitute for the superstitious incantations which Brahmins chanted at weddings. While others eagerly offered suggestions, Balaram’s fidgeting grew till he was twisting and turning on his mat. Then Dantu prodded him sharply in the ribs and whispered: Go on; tell them.

Drawing in a deep breath, Balaram jumped to his feet. What does it matter? he shouted. What does it matter?

Gopal looked at him dumbfounded: What do you mean?

I mean what does it matter what the Brahmins say and the rishis say and the myths say? What does it have to do with science or reason or the masses of Hindoostan? What good will it do anyone if the masses start saying Hail, Cosmic Boson instead of He Bhagoban? Will it cure them of disease? Will it fill their stomachs? Will it get the British out of here?

Gopal said: Balaram, that’s enough. Remember where you are. Don’t shout; you’re not in your right mind.

In astonishment Balaram exclaimed: I’m not in my right mind?

Gopal cast up his hands: All right, then, tell us what you would like us to do.

Balaram’s slim face narrowed with intensity. He swept his hair from his eyes and looked straight at Gopal. It’s not what I want to do, he said. It’s how. This is nothing. Just talk. Empty talk. That’s what Pasteur would have called it. Do you remember Pasteur? Do you remember the book you gave me — you, yourself?

Soundlessly Gopal sank on to a mat.

Do you remember how Pasteur first came to science? It wasn’t by thinking about the Cosmic Atom. It was because his father was a poor tanner. Do you remember why he left his promising studies in crystallography? It was because the brewers of France came to him and said: What makes our beer rot? It was that question, asked by simple people, which led to the discovery of what he called the ‘infinitesimally small’ — the Germ, in other words.

Has anything changed the world as much as the discovery of the germ? Has there ever been a greater break in history than the moment when men were unburdened of their responsibility for their bodies and all disease was assigned to the treachery of the elements?

And how did it come about? Not through cogitations about the cosmic, but as an answer to the everyday problems of simple people.

Who did the silk farmers of Europe go to when disease struck their silkworms and whole provinces lay devastated and groaning in misery? Who did they go to with their children hungry at their breasts and their livelihood wasting in their fields? Who but Pasteur? They went to him and they said: Save us. And when he saw their wretchedness not all the powers on the earth could have kept him from answering.

That is why the world still has silk.

What was it that led him to struggle for years, at the risk of his own life, to rid the world of hydrophobia?

Nothing but the everyday suffering of helpless children and their mothers. It was that which sustained him when all the world laughed and said: Pasteur is mad, bitten by his dogs.

Why? Why did he do it? What drove him?

It wasn’t talk of reason, it wasn’t the universal atom. It was passion; a passion which sprang from the simple and the everyday. A passion for the future, not the past. It was that which made him the greatest man of his time, for it is that passion which makes men great.

Gopal cleared his throat uneasily. All right, Balaram, he said. But what can we do? We’re not scientists. We can’t find cures for things.

Balaram paused. Slowly he said: I don’t know. How can I say? All I know is that this is pointless. If all these things we talk about — reason, science and all the rest — are to mean anything, they must have the power to move people. Who can be moved by the Cosmic Boson? It is the everyday, the mundane things that happen in real life which move people. If we want to do anything at all, that is what we must think about. And we have to start here, in Presidency College, in the Hindu Hostel, with our fellow-students. If we can’t make them change their lives, if we can’t make them see Reason, what can we ever have to say to the masses of Hindoostan?

He stopped there and started as though he had only then noticed that everyone in the room was staring at him. He looked around once, in confusion, and then he ran from the room. Dantu followed him out.

As he watched Balaram go, Gopal had a premonition: a premonition of the disaster he would call upon himself and all of them, if ever he was allowed to take charge of the society. He decided then, with an uncharacteristic determination, that he would do everything in his power to keep that from happening.

After that meeting Gopal’s standing among the Rationalists suffered greatly while Balaram’s, with Dantu’s quiet help, grew. Despite that, through the rest of that year Gopal struggled with all his resources to fight Balaram’s influence in the society. He succeeded, though narrowly, and the Rationalists spent that year safely rewriting parts of the great epics. But Gopal had only that year left in college. At the end of it he was to leave to study law.

Through that year, perhaps because of their clashes over the future of the Rationalists, their friendship grew stronger than ever. The day Gopal was to leave the hostel, Balaram helped him tie up his luggage. Gopal could see that Balaram was no less saddened than he was. But he saw, too, that Balaram was charged with the energy of a new-found freedom, and he was filled with a terrible foreboding.

But there was no longer anything he could do to save Balaram from himself.

Four decades later, long after the vindication of that first premonition, Gopal was to know that same foreboding again.

One afternoon, about three years after Toru-debi sent Balaram’s library up in flames, Gopal was busy with a client in his chambers at the High Court, when his peon interrupted to tell him that Balaram had arrived. Gopal was surprised, for it was not a Sunday, and Balaram rarely came to Calcutta on weekdays. But Gopal had to appear in court for his client that afternoon, so he told his peon to ask Balaram to wait in a room outside.

After the hearing Gopal came back to his chambers pleased with himself, for the judge had complimented him on his line of argument. He found Balaram pacing his chambers, frowning. Gopal dusted his hands briskly and lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. So, Balaram, he said, how did you spend the afternoon?

Does it matter? Balaram snapped.

Gopal paused. Balaram irritable was a matter of some surprise; it was rarely that he noticed the everyday vexations which irritate the rest of the world. So Gopal sent his peon to fetch some tea and Circus biscuits, and droned comfortably on about his client and his case. Balaram listened with evident impatience, pulling books out at random from the bookshelves.

Gopal stopped when he judged it right, and said: What’s the matter, Balaram?

I’m worried about Alu, said Balaram, running his fingers through his hair. It’s probably the asterion growing together with the sagittal suture. A disastrous combination: Firmness plus Combativeness. It could only spell obstinacy.

The boy had stopped going to school altogether. He still read when he could find books, and his talent for languages had grown if anything, but when it came to school the boy seemed quite determined. He never said anything — he simply wouldn’t go. Everybody had talked to him and argued with him, but it made no difference. He never said a word.

He seemed to have made up his mind, and he had a determination unusual in a fourteen-year-old. It was that asterion. And there was no known remedy for it. But there had to be. There had to be an answer.

What does he do, then, Gopal asked, when he’s not at school?

Nobody’s sure, Balaram answered. But people say he spends most of his time in Shombhu Debnath’s huts.

Shombhu Debnath? said Gopal. Who’s that?

Oh, said Balaram, don’t you know him? He has a remarkable glabella and frontal sinuses. I haven’t examined him, and now I suppose I never will, but even from a distance anyone can tell. It’s not just his glabella. The orbital edges over the trochleas are some of the best I’ve ever seen. It’s unusual to come across so many Perceptive Faculties in one specimen: you know — Individuality, Size, Colour. He has an interesting forehead, too, and good temples. You’d probably like it — plenty of Wit, Hope, Wonder and Poesy.

Yes, said Gopal, but who is he, what does he do?

He’s a weaver, Balaram said absently. He settled in Lalpukur years ago. You’ve probably seen his daughter Maya. She works in our house in the mornings. He has a son, too, called Rakhal. He’s taught him weaving, too.

What does Alu do in a weaver’s huts? Gopal asked astonished.

I don’t know. Watches them weave perhaps.

Well, said Gopal, you must explain to Alu that if he doesn’t go to school he’ll never be able to get a job.

What? Balaram looked at him in stunned amazement. How could I say that? It would be wrong; it would be immoral. Children go to school for their first glimpse into the life of the mind. Not for jobs. If I thought that my teaching is nothing but a means of finding jobs, I’d stop teaching tomorrow.

Gopal looked at him wearily. Balaram, he said, as you grow older, you grow more foolish. Why do you think children are sent to school?

Balaram sank on to a chair, cupped his face in his hands and stared at Gopal.

Gopal decided that Balaram needed a diversion. So he suggested that they go to see a film. That year, to Gopal’s surprise, Balaram had developed an enormous fondness for Hindi films. He saw one, sometimes two whenever he came to Calcutta. He often went to Naboganj, near Lalpukur, to see films, sometimes taking Alu with him. Gopal was hard put to understand his new passion. After suffering through a few at Balaram’s insistence, he had decided that he could stomach no more. But that evening he changed his mind; even three hours of tedium would be better than playing midwife to Balaram’s worries.

So he sent his peon home to tell his wife that he would be late and they caught a taxi to the Menoka, near the Lakes. The film was Aradhana. The queue for tickets stretched for more than half a mile. They had to buy tickets at ten times the rate, from a tout.

When they came out of the hall three hours later Balaram was smiling crookedly, his eyes mistily damp. But now it was Gopal who was irritated, resentful of his three wasted hours. He followed Balaram as he wandered to a bench in the park by the Lakes.

How can you bear these noisy melodramas? he burst forth at Balaram’s back in annoyance.

Balaram turned to him angrily: Noisy melodramas?

So much predictable rubbish, said Gopal. No story, no plot, just hours of weeping and breast-beating. There’s nothing remotely real even about the way they talk. It’s just speeches all the time.

Real? Balaram cried. Is it real to be cut to size with a tape? What you heard is rhetoric. How can rhetoric be real or unreal? Rhetoric is a language flexing its muscles. You wouldn’t understand: you’ve spent too many years reading novels about drawing-rooms in a language whose history has destroyed its knowledge of its own body. The truth is your mind is nothing but a dumping-ground for the West.

Gopal gasped at the injustice of it. My mind? he said. And what about yours? What about you, spending your life reading about Pasteur curing beer in nineteenth-century France? What about all those books you read written by crazy Europeans about the shapes of skulls in prisons? How can you say my mind is a dumping-ground …?

Balaram’s face was suddenly flushed. He jumped to his feet: Be quiet, Gopal. Don’t say any more. You don’t know what you’re saying. Science doesn’t belong to countries. Reason doesn’t belong to any nation. They belong to history — to the world.

Balaram turned, flung a stone into the lake and stalked off. Wait, Balaram, Gopal called after him, listen …

Balaram’s voice came back to him from a distance — You’re wrong, I’ll show you — and Gopal was left alone with his sense of foreboding.

For eight months after that Gopal neither saw nor heard from Balaram. He sent three letters to Lalpukur in that time. None was answered. He sent a telegram: Cable welfare speediliest. There was no answer, and Gopal was seriously worried. He began to think of dropping his cases for a few days to make a quick trip to Lalpukur.

Then one day in mid-July, while Gopal was at home, drinking his evening tea, his wife heard the doorbell ring. She saw Balaram at the door and exclaimed with pleasure. Before he could step in she unleashed a volley of questions about Toru-debi and Alu. But he brushed past her, straight to the veranda.

He stood in the doorway, looking at Gopal, his hands on his hips. I have an answer for you, he announced. I’ve made Alu a weaver.

Gopal instantly forgot all his relief at seeing Balaram again. His mouth fell open with disbelief at the thought of an educated, literate man pushing his own nephew to manual labour.

Balaram, delighted at Gopal’s surprise, said: Yes, it was the answer. The right thing to do. It took me a long time to reach it, but I did at last.

Gopal, in stupefaction, took off his spectacles and began to wipe them on his vest. But why? he said. Why?

It was the lump on his forehead beneath the hair-line. It had taken him all these years to discover its meaning. Spurzheim was wrong. The Mechanical sense was not on the pterion; it was not a mere propensity, to be lumped with Alimentiveness and Acquisitiveness. The Mechanical was the highest of all organs — the organ that made a mere two-legged creature Man, the seat of Reason. Where else could that organ be but on the crown of the forehead?

Once the organ was identified everything else became blindingly clear — Alu’s huge hands, his squat stocky frame. Even the mysterious attraction that drew him to Shombhu Debnath’s home. How could he cheat his destiny?

As soon as he knew the truth he had smuggled his instruments out of his house, under his clothes, and gone to Shombhu Debnath’s house. For months he had spent his evenings measuring Shombhu Debnath’s looms, the distance between the shuttle strings and the weaver’s hands, between the pedals and the seat. He had worked until there was no room left for error. The calculations had taken even longer. When at last it was all done, trembling with apprehension, he had matched Alu’s measurements with his calculations.

His intuition was proved right in every detail: Alu’s body, his hands, his legs, his arms, not to speak of the Organ, corresponded exactly to his calculations of the proportions ideal for a weaver.

Only then, when Balaram knew he was right, did he take the boy to Shombhu Debnath and say: Take him to be your apprentice.

And the boy?

The boy was overjoyed. He wanted nothing better.

But why? Why weaving?

What could it be but weaving? Man at the loom is the finest example of Mechanical man; a creature who makes his own world as no other can, with his mind. The machine is man’s curse and his salvation, and no machine has created man as much as the loom. It has created not separate worlds but one, for it has never permitted the division of the world. The loom recognizes no continents and no countries. It has tied the world together with its bloody ironies from the beginning of human time.

It has never permitted the division of reason.

Human beings have woven and traded in cloth from the time they built their first houses and cities. Indian cloth was found in the graves of the Pharaohs. Indian soil is strewn with cloth from China. The whole of the ancient world hummed with the cloth trade. The Silk Route from China, running through central Asia and Persia to the ports of the Mediterranean and from there to the markets of Africa and Europe, bound continents together for more centuries than we can count. It spawned empires and epics, cities and romances. Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo were just journeymen following paths that had been made safe and tame over centuries by unknown, unsung traders, armed with nothing more than bundles of cloth. It was the hunger for Indian chintzes and calicos, brocades and muslins that led to the foundation of the first European settlements in India. All through those centuries cloth, in its richness and variety, bound the Mediterranean to Asia, India to Africa, the Arab world to Europe, in equal, bountiful trade.

Think of cotton. It’s easy now, but it wasn’t once.

India first gave cotton, Gossypium indicus, to the world. The cities of the Indus valley grew cotton as early as 1500 BC. But soon cotton was busy spinning its web around the world. It had King Sennacherib of Mesopotamia in its toils by 700 BC, and before long it had found its way to Herodotus in Greece. It travelled eastwards more slowly, but its conquests were no smaller in magnitude.

Everywhere it went people had trouble thinking of it. Only the oldest of the Indo-European languages could think of it as a thing in itself and even then the thought was so difficult that across continents people hardly dared differ. In Sanskrit it was called karpasia, in Persian kirpas. In Greek it was carbasos, and in Latin carbasus. They gave Hebrew its kirpas.

But it couldn’t last. Cotton changed the world too fast, made too many demands, called for too much subtlety. English is lucky. It has a word which can even begin to suggest cotton as a substance different from others. So many languages, like German with its baumwolle, are condemned for ever to the blinkers that bound Sennacherib and Herodotus to think of cotton as a misbegotten wool. But even the English were handed down their word, like so much else that raised them to civilization, by the Arabs, from their kutn (how fine an irony when several centuries later hundreds of thousands of Egyptian fellahin were tied in bondage to the demands of the cotton mills of Lancashire). But the Arabs took their own word from the Akkadian kitinu. And there they had lost the battle already, for that word came from kitu, in the same language, which meant nothing but dreary flax.

What does it say for human beings that they let themselves be ruled so completely by so simple a thing as cloth?

When the history of the world broke, cotton and cloth were behind it; mechanical man in pursuit of his own destruction.

Perhaps it began in the sixteenth century with William Lee in England, and his invention of a stretching frame for yarn. Then it was Arkwright with his spinning-jenny, and Kay and his flying shuttle.

The machine had driven men mad.

Lancashire poured out its waterfalls of cloth, and the once cloth-hungry and peaceful Englishmen and Dutchmen and Danes of Calcutta and Chandannagar, Madras and Bombay turned their trade into a garotte to make every continent safe for the cloth of Lancashire, strangling the very weavers and techniques they had crossed oceans to discover. Millions of Africans and half of America were enslaved by cotton.

And then weaving changed mechanical man again with the computer. In the mid-nineteenth century when Charles Babbage built his first calculating machine, using the principle of storing information on punched cards, he took his idea not from systems of writing nor from mathematics, but from the draw-loom. The Chinese have used punched cards to discriminate between warp threads in the weaving of silk since 1000 BC. They gave it (unwillingly) to the Italians, and the Italians gave it to the rest of Europe, in the form of the draw-loom. Basile Bouchon of Lyons, in 1725, added a roll of perforated paper to store the pattern in its punched memory. And in 1801 Joseph Jacquard invented his automatic selective device based on the same principle. Babbage took his ideas for his calculating engines from Jacquard’s loom, and Holleville who patented the first punched-card machines took his ideas from Babbage. Once again the loom reaches through the centuries and across continents to decide the fate of mechanical man.

Who knows what new horrors lie in store?

It is a gory history in parts; a story of greed and destruction. Every scrap of cloth is stained by a bloody past. But it is the only history we have and history is hope as well as despair.

And so weaving, too, is hope; a living belief that having once made the world one and blessed it with its diversity it must do so again. Weaving is hope because it has no country, no continent.

Weaving is Reason, which makes the world mad and makes it human.

Chapter Three. War

Wars keep people busy. As a rule the spectators are the busiest of all. Some keep busy helping armies with their business of murder and massacre, loot and rapine. Others are left with blood trickling their way and no choice but to join the flow or mop it up.

The people of Lalpukur could not help knowing that a war was brewing across the border; their relatives on the other side never let them forget it. Often they were drummed to bed by the rattle of distant gunfire. But on the whole the fighting was to pass Lalpukur by. And, unlike some of their neighbours, no one in Lalpukur had the energy to join in of their own will. The reason was that the people of Lalpukur were too melancholy. Vomited out of their native soil years ago in another carnage, and dumped hundreds of miles away, they had no anger left. Their only passion was memory; a longing for a land where the green was greener, the rice whiter, the fish bigger than boats; where the rivers’ names sang like Megh Malhar on a rainy day — the Meghna, the Dholeshshori, the Kirtinosha, the Shitolokhkha, the majestic Arialkha, wider than the horizon. Rivers which bore the wealth of a continent to their land, from Tibet, from the Himalayas. Rivers overflowing with bounty, as wide as seas, their banks invisible from one another.

Lalpukur could fight no war because it was damned to a hell of longing.

The vocation of the melancholy is not anger but mourning. When in need they charge by the hour and sell a bitter sort of consolation. And all that Lalpukur had to offer was consolation of a sort — refuge. It could never be a battlefield; nothing but a dumping-ground for the refuse from tyrants’ frenzies.

Long before the world had sniffed genocide in Bangladesh, Lalpukur began to swell. It grew and grew. First, it was brothers with burnt backs and balls cut off at the roots. Then it was cousins and cousins of cousins. Then it did not matter; borders dissolved under the weight of millions of people in panic-stricken flight from an army of animals.

Bamboo shanties soon luxuriated around the village. The great banyan tree at its centre became a leaky shelter for dozens of families and their bundled belongings. Lalpukur burst its boundaries and poured out, jostling with the district road a furlong away. Bhudeb Roy’s rice fields sprouted shacks of packing wood and corrugated iron. He didn’t mind. On the contrary, he was very helpful and even hired a few tough young men to organize the shacks properly. He had discovered that rents from refugee shacks yielded a better harvest than rice. The tea-shop under the banyan tree diversified into selling rice and vegetables, and Bolai-da began to stock corrugated iron and sheets of tin beaten out of discarded kerosene-containers. Soon cycle-repairing was the smallest of his concerns.

Everyone was busy, and Balaram, though he did not know it and would not have cared if he had, had good reason to be grateful for it. Had people had time on their hands he may have had to face a good deal of criticism and even straightforward opposition over his decision to apprentice Alu to a weaver. And despite everything people did find time to talk: what business had a schoolmaster to take his nephew out of school and apprentice him to a weaver (and that, too, when schoolmasters didn’t have to pay school fees)? What could it mean?

A few rumours took root under the banyan tree: Alu had been thrown out of school for failing once too often; Balaram was going to start a cloth factory in Calcutta with Alu as foreman. It was something deep; that was for certain.

But then Lalpukur would be convulsed with growing pains once more and people would be busy again.

As for Balaram, the only person he was really worried about was Toru-debi. But Toru-debi was busy, too: she had perfected her seamless petticoat and was hard at work on a scheme for a buttonless blouse. Weeks passed before she heard of Alu’s apprenticeship. When she did she talked of it only once to Balaram. The books weren’t enough, she said resignedly. There’s nothing I can do about your head. But it doesn’t matter — you’ll put an end to it yourself.

Balaram could hardly believe that he had got off so lightly. He sighed with relief; at last he was free to give his whole energies to the new problem that had so suddenly confronted him.

The fact is that, because of the extraordinary developments in the village, Balaram had almost forgotten about Alu. Soon after the refugees began flooding into Lalpukur, Balaram had gone to take a look at their shacks and shanties. He was appalled: he saw people eating surrounded by their children’s shit; the tin roofs were black with flies; in the lanes rats wouldn’t yield to human feet; there were no drains and no clean water, and the air was stagnant with germs, pregnant with every known disease.

Balaram could think of only one answer: carbolic acid. Nothing else would be remotely as appropriate. There was a kind of historical legitimacy about carbolic acid. The only alternative Balaram could think of were mercury-based disinfectants, and somehow he could not bring himself to use those. Weren’t they created by the Great Adversary, Robert Koch, who had so tenaciously and falsely opposed Pasteur until he could no longer deny the truth? And weren’t they invalid in a way, since Koch had come upon them almost by accident, believing their effects to be other than they actually were? Besides, they’d probably be too expensive anyway. No, it had to be carbolic acid, that masterly brainchild of Lister’s, Pasteur’s friend and Great Disciple.

So Balaram started a campaign. He went around the shanties, warning people of the swift death they were calling on themselves. He called meetings and urged them to contribute what they could to buy carbolic acid. People listened to him, for they knew he was a schoolmaster, but they hesitated. It was not till he started a fund with a bit of his own money that they threw in a few annas and paisas. Soon they had enough to buy a fair quantity of disinfectant. Then, very systematically, with the help of a few volunteers, Balaram began to disinfect every exposed inch of the new settlements.

Bolai-da said one day, watching him: This is a new Balaram-babu. It was true: Balaram, antiseptic and pungent with disinfectant, had never been so happy.

Bhudeb Roy, as he told ASP Jyoti Das later, did nothing to stop Balaram, because at the time he was one of the busiest people in the village. But he watched suspiciously because it was clear to him at once that Balaram was up to something. It had to be more than mere coincidence that he had started the business with disinfectants and apprenticed his nephew to Shombhu Debnath at the same time.

It was the link with Shombhu Debnath which really upset Bhudeb Roy. It worried him so much that he managed to find time to speak to Balaram about the matter.

One day Balaram was summoned to Bhudeb Roy’s office in the school. He went reluctantly, for he hated the office. Five portraits of Bhudeb Roy stared out of its narrow walls. Two of them — one a photograph of Bhudeb Roy in a black gown, holding his BA degree, and another, a picture of him in Darjeeling, his massive bulk posed playfully against a railing with the Himalayas in the background — had incense sticks burning reverentially under them.

Balaram could not bring himself to sit in that room. He stood stiffly, holding the back of a chair, and said: Yes?

Sit down, Balaram-babu, said Bhudeb Roy. Balaram shook his head. As you please, said Bhudeb Roy, sticking a plug of tobacco into his jaw with his little finger. His jaw worked laterally as he chewed on it.

Balaram-babu, he said, your decisions are your own and I don’t want to interfere, but I have to think about the good of the school. Do you think anybody will want to send their children to a school where they will be taught by a man who has apprenticed his own nephew to a weaver? Think about it, Balaram-babu. I leave it to you, but perhaps you should think about your future in the school, too.

Balaram turned and would have walked out, but Bhudeb Roy called out after him: Wait, Balaram-babu. Have you thought about what you’re doing? You’re putting his health at serious risk. People like us can’t do that kind of work. He’ll fall ill, and you’ll be responsible. He’ll have to drink water there, maybe even eat there. I don’t believe in caste, as you know, but their food is dirty. Very dirty. Have you thought about that?

Balaram had not. He stopped worriedly. Do you mean, he said, their food may have germs?

Yes, yes, said Bhudeb Roy, germs.

But, Balaram said, thinking hard, their food must be cooked by Maya, and Maya cooks in our house, too, sometimes. There can’t be much difference.

Bhudeb Roy’s tiny eyes hardened. His voice rose: Balaram-babu, you’re calling disaster on yourself. I warn you: stay away from that man Shombhu Debnath. Have you any idea what that man is like? Why, he’s not even a good weaver.

Balaram had to turn sharply on his heel and walk out of the room. It would not have been correct to let Bhudeb Roy see him laughing.

You couldn’t expect Bhudeb Roy to be dispassionate about Shombhu Debnath.

Once, a long time ago, there were a few toddy palms on a patch of land behind Bhudeb Roy’s house. They were rented to a toddy-tapper, and they yielded a fair income every year.

But one year the toddy-tapper refused to pay rent any longer. His toddy-pots were empty every morning, he complained, and he earned nothing from the palms any more.

That was an eventful year. Bhudeb Roy married Parboti-debi and brought her to Lalpukur that year, and it was at about the same time that Shombhu Debnath first arrived in Lalpukur.

The toddy-tapper was a drunken old man, but shrewd. Bhudeb-babu, he leered, if you wanted some, why didn’t you tell me? You’ll hurt yourself climbing those trees.

Bhudeb Roy, red-faced: What do you mean?

The old man, nodding towards the curtains which had screened the consummation of Bhudeb Roy’s nuptials, whispered conspiratorially: Bit dry, is she? He was hurled out of the house.

But no one else would rent the palms, either. It became common knowledge in the village that the pots which were hung up in the fronds to catch fresh toddy at night were usually dry in the morning. But there was nothing wrong with the palms — the nicks in the trunk oozed fresh milky toddy through the day.

It became a deeply shameful matter for Bhudeb Roy. He was bombarded with tips on wife-rearing. Everybody was full of sympathy: he was too soon married to be driven to drink by a wife. Bhudeb Roy could only gnash his teeth. It was true that he could not always understand his Parboti, but she was as gentle a woman as any in the village.

Bhudeb Roy decided to solve the mystery. He bought a huge torch in Naboganj and one night he waited up in his room, nervously holding on to Parboti-debi’s ankle. He discovered something that made the blood stop cold in his veins.

Late at night, in the furry blackness before dawn, an eerie noise wafted out of the toddy palms and curled around the house. It was like a hoarse wail; a high, gliding, sobbing wail. Bhudeb Roy’s joints melted. He jammed his mosquito-net tight under his mattress and put a pillow over his ears.

Parboti-debi watched him with a smile. It’s like the night calling one, she said, isn’t it?

Bhudeb Roy, astonished: Have you heard it before?

Yes, she said. I hear it every night. She smiled. At the time she was pregnant with her first son (he of the incipient moustache and old man’s paunch). She was an imposing figure then, very far from the wispy, harassed woman, stooped with fecundity, that she became later. She was erect and tall (taller than Bhudeb Roy), fresh-faced, with hair which shone like painted glass. She had a low, rich-timbred voice, very pleasing. It was said that she used to sing once. But Bhudeb Roy had put a stop to it: No shrieking in my house; besides you need your strength for your children.

Why didn’t you tell me about the noise? Bhudeb Roy said.

You didn’t have a torch, she said, smiling limpidly.

After that Bhudeb Roy slept with two pillows over his head. One night he woke to find Parboti-debi gone from his bed. The room whistled with the jagged echoes of that distant wailing. Biting his knuckles Bhudeb Roy crept to a window and shone his torch out. It fell on Parboti-debi, in her white night-time sari, stock-still in the mango grove behind their house.

Bhudeb Roy decided that something had to be done. Wails were bad for pregnancies. So he decided to hire Bolai-da, who was on leave from the Army, to investigate the mystery with him.

It was a mistake. Bhudeb Roy discovered too late that Bolai-da’s real love was gossip.

Bolai-da was thin and painfully bandy-legged even then, but it was only much later that his face twisted mournfully sideways, like soggy cardboard. At that time, because he was the only soldier in the village, nobody doubted that he had the courage of a pride of lions. He could look a Sardar-ji in the eye, people said. A real one, with a proper turban and everything. He had once knocked over a seven-foot, mustachioed and bandoliered Pathan. The wails would shrivel, everyone agreed, at the very sight of Bolai-da.

The stories gave Bhudeb Roy courage. He armed Bolai-da with a wooden club and bought new batteries for his torch. Then he locked Parboti-debi into their room and told her to shut her ears and pray if the wailing started again. She looked very distressed, and Bhudeb Roy was flattered by her concern. But she said nothing.

Bhudeb Roy and Bolai-da wrapped themselves in blankets and went down to the mango grove to wait. With eerie punctuality, in the awful blackness of the last hours of the night, howls wafted through the mango grove. Bhudeb Roy pushed Bolai-da. Bolai-da pushed Bhudeb Roy. Coward, said Bhudeb Roy. I thought you’d knocked over a seven-foot Pathan?

To tell you the truth, Bhudeb-babu, Bolai-da said through chattering teeth, a bus I happened to be on did it.

They held each other’s shoulders and crept forward, towards the palms. They were no more than a yard or two away when the wail suddenly soared and splintered into a comet of high notes. Bhudeb Roy leapt backwards. Somehow his feet entangled themselves in a creeper. He fell with a shriek.

The wails froze into silence. Then they heard a voice, a disappointing, all too human voice, slurred but perfectly comprehensible: Come up, come up before it finishes.

It was Bolai-da who recovered the torch and shone it into the palm. He spat on the ground and smiled at Bhudeb Roy. Bhudeb Roy did not see him, for he was crouching in the undergrowth, his head between his arms.

Bhudeb-babu, Bolai-da said, you can come out now. It’s only Shombhu Debnath.

He shone the torch into the palm. Shombhu Debnath was clinging to the top with his knees. He had one arm wrapped around a fan-shaped leaf for support. In the other he held a toddy-pot. All he wore was a strip of a cotton gamcha around his thin, angular waist.

Bhudeb Roy’s jaws worked convulsively. He coughed, for he had grass in his mouth. Shombhu Debnath? he spluttered. What’s he doing here?

Drinking God’s milk, Shombhu answered, and singing.

Bhudeb Roy exploded: What?

Raga Lalit of course, Shombhu said, surprised. What else could you sing at this time of the night?

Come down here with that pot, Bhudeb Roy roared.

Why? The toddy’s fresher here. Closer to God. It ferments nastily when it gets down to earth with men and money.

Thief. Bhudeb Roy flung himself at the palm. Thief, thief, petty thief.

Next day he had all his palms chopped down. That was the only time he had ever destroyed a source of income.

It was generally felt that Bhudeb Roy was wrong. Shombhu Debnath was no thief. If he were, why would he sing while he was up in the palms? Besides, everybody knew that if they found a few emptied pots in their palms they had only to ask Rakhal to be paid their price (though, of course, only if Rakhal happened to have money that day).

People who had known Shombhu Debnath and his family in Noakhali used to say that he had always been like that: restless, unpredictable, fond of heights. A little mad, too: that was why he sang.

Only those who did not know him well were surprised when he first disappeared at the age of twelve from the quiet, reassuring huddle of his father’s and uncles’ and cousins’ huts on the edge of the Noakhali mainland opposite Siddi Island, where the Meghna becomes the Bamni before flowing into the sea.

His family, like all the Debnaths, were weavers of coarse cotton. They wove thick white cloth, checked lungis, coarse cotton gamchas, and suchlike in great bulk. It was mere drudgery: throwing the shuttle one way and another for years without end until their spines collapsed. It was not much of a technique, and Shombhu mastered it while he was still a child. His mother was not at all surprised when he vanished. She had known; she had seen it in his hands. He had beautiful hands, long-fingered and strong, quicker than the eye, and always restless.

But even she had no inkling of his plans. Nobody did, for Shombhu had set out to do the impossible.

As a child Shombhu, like all the other children in his hamlet, had heard tales and legends about the Boshaks of Tangail, near Dhaka. Everyone knew the legend of the Boshaks: for centuries they had ruled continents with their gossamer weaves. But it was not only for their weaving that they were legendary; it was also for the secretiveness with which they hoarded the trade and craft secrets of their caste. A Boshak could no more teach an outsider than another man could give away his family’s best land. The few outsiders who learnt from them disappeared into the fastnesses of their families — they married Boshak girls, lived in their houses, ate their food, and surrendered every memory of their lives outside. And if there was anyone against whom every glimmer of an opening in the Boshak defences would be clamped shut it was a Debnath — a despised weaver of coarse cotton.

Twelve-year-old Shombhu Debnath found a way of breaking the formation. He walked from his village to the ferry port of Shahebghata and found a boat to take him up the Meghna and down the Padma to Tangail. There, passing himself off as an orphan, he found a place in a Boshak master-weaver’s family, in a hamlet outside the town. He worked with them for years, for nothing but his food and a few clothes. He learnt to size and to warp; with the master-weaver’s sons he learnt the secrets of punching Jacquard index cards. He learnt the intricacies of their jamdani inlay techniques. He even learnt to make the fine bamboo reeds which were the centrepieces of their jamdani looms, the only ones which could hold fine silk yarn without tearing it. That was a skill few even among the Boshaks could boast of, for it was the preserve of a wandering caste of boatmen and bangle-makers called Bédé.

And he learnt their songs, melancholy, throbbing songs of love and longing. They all sang, he and the master-weaver’s sons and everyone else, they sang as they worked in their tin-roofed shed, each at their own loom, taking their beat from the rhythmic clatter of fly-shuttles and the tinkling of needle-weights hanging on Jacquard looms.

Shombhu forgot his hamlet; he had no family left but the master-weaver’s.

But it had to end. One day the master-weaver met a merchant from Noakhali. That day, tears pouring down his cheek, he confronted Shombhu with his secret. Shombhu fled that night, straight back to Noakhali, towards the safe circle of huts that had suddenly been resurrected in his memory.

But the master-weaver’s tears had burnt his curses into Shombhu’s flesh. Shombhu paid for his treachery — the dreadful, corroding price of a wasted secret.

He arrived in his hamlet with the gift of fire cupped in his palms and found that his world preferred its meat raw. We know what we know, they said when he tried to teach them the secrets of jamdani, and we want to know no more. A crow falls out of the sky if it tries to learn peacockery.

Shombhu, too, had his burnt books.

That was when Shombhu first began to frequent the branches of toddy palms. Soon he stopped working altogether. Then one day he disappeared again. This time his family were relieved.

He left the hamlet with a group of singers — wanderers who spent their lives journeying from one village to another, living on alms, dancing and singing of their love of Sri Krishna. They taught Shombhu what they knew of the rudiments of music: the moods and the hours, the ascending and descending scales of a few basic ragas like Bhairavi, Asavari, Desh, Yaman Kalyan, and Lalit. But the lessons never lasted very long. His teachers usually lost interest halfway. Technique was immaterial to them; all their bhajans and songs ended in the same ecstatic chant: Hare Rama, Hare Krishna; Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare.

Then one day, long after the convulsions of the decade had swallowed his family, Shombhu appeared in Lalpukur, with an ailing wife, and incurably and thirstily hoarse. Some people in the village recognized him and helped him a little for the sake of his vanished family. He cleared a patch of land and built himself a couple of huts, at a marked distance from the rest of the village. He even built himself a loom. His wife recovered long enough to bear him a son. But her strength failed her the second time, and she died bearing Maya.

Shombhu almost stopped working then. He wove barely enough to keep them alive. When Rakhal was about eight, he taught him to weave the coarse cotton of his ancestors, and let him cope as best he could. All the help he offered him after that was the encouragement of an occasional, hoarse Jaijaiwanti. Maya listened to him, and when she was barely knee-high, and already wise with poverty, she thought ahead to her wedding day and decided that a hoarse Jaijaiwanti for dower would fetch her no husband. So she decided to ask Toru-debi, for theirs was the house nearest to their own, for a job — anything at all.

Shombhu, wounded to the last ragged edge of his proud poverty, forbade her: Shombhu Debnath’s daughter a servant? But her womanly courage and worldliness were proof against him, and she had her way.

In revenge, Shombhu Debnath thundered Bhairavi from the tree-tops and would not speak to Balaram.

But Balaram watched him, especially when he heard that he had stopped weaving. Balaram could only guess at the wealth of his skull, but even at a distance he felt a theory stirring …

Balaram had not told Gopal the whole truth. Alu’s was not the only organ he had identified. Alu was just one part of the pattern he had conceived. The other was Shombhu Debnath.

Shombhu Debnath was tall, spectrally dark and skeletally thin. He was usually nearly naked, with only a thin gamcha wound around his waist, displaying proudly the corded muscles he bore all over him as a legacy of his years of weaving and wandering. His face was his own hoarse crescendo in Bhairavi, a stumbling sweep, lush-lipped and full-nosed, pouring in a broken glade from ridged cheekbones at the corners of his eyes; the eyes blood-red but lustrous, the forehead soaring uneasily to a crown of knotted hair, coiled snake-like on top of his head. That was his own little bound rivulet, he liked to say, a pale echo of the Jatadhari’s Ganga.

I know what you are, said Balaram after the interests of science and the discovery of Alu’s mechanical organ had lent him the courage to force himself on Shombhu Debnath and his looms.

What? said Shombhu suspiciously.

You’re a teacher, said Balaram. That’s why you must take our Alu to be your apprentice.

Shombhu laughed: I haven’t taught anyone except my Rakhal, and in Naboganj they display his cloth when they want a laugh. I haven’t woven in years.

That’s why you haven’t woven, Balaram said, serenely sure. You’re not a weaver; you haven’t the right organs. Everything about you goes to prove that you’re a teacher.

To prove that he was serious he pulled five ten-rupee notes out of his trouser pocket and slapped them into Shombhu’s hand. There, he said, the price for your head — your first fees. Shombhu shook his hand, aghast, but the money clung to it. Static electricity, said Balaram. Sri Krishna’s leela, said Shombhu. Divine play, but not for a mortal man to question.

That was how Alu had his wish and arrived in Shombhu Debnath’s courtyard one morning, no more as a visitor, but an aspiring apprentice, spick-span, oiled and eager. But it was not to be as he had imagined: no welcoming embrace from the Master, no words of craftsmanly wisdom. Shombhu Debnath smiled to see him, a grimace of a smile, baring his hookah-blackened teeth, and said: No more peace here. Then he picked up his hookah and wandered gurgling into the bamboo forest.

Imagine Alu: fifteen now, stocky and broad-shouldered, in blue shorts, his head still huge but the bumps a little smoother, standing forlorn in a courtyard, listening to the fading gurgles of a hookah. The courtyard is not large as courtyards go, but tranquil, shaded by an overhanging jackfruit tree. It is a simple square uthon of beaten earth set between three huts. The huts are large, cool rooms, four walls of clay, covered by a thatch of bamboo and straw, arched over like upturned boats. One is Maya’s, one shared by Rakhal and his father, and the smallest serves as a kitchen. At the far end of the courtyard is an open shed, a sloping thatch roof, held up by bamboo poles, under which Shombhu Debnath’s two fly-shuttle looms are set in waist-deep pits. Rakhal is sitting at one of those looms. He sees Alu’s disappointment and calls out sourly: Do you think he’ll ever teach you? Do you think he knows how to teach? Look how he taught me. Go back while there’s time. Don’t waste your life here. Rakhal is thinking of his own youth and strength, wasted at the loom, when he could be at a kung fu class in Naboganj instead.

The forest did not yield up Shombhu Debnath that day or the next or the day after. Eventually it was Maya who became Alu’s first teacher.

First, she taught him to starch yarn: tedious foul-smelling work, days spent hanging yarn up to dry after dipping it in pots of congealed rice starch. Then she taught him to wind the starched yarn on bobbins, with a spinning wheel: children’s work — spin the wheel with one hand, hold the yarn taut with the other, making sure that it winds evenly. Dreary, dreary work. Even the speed with which Alu turned out perfect oval bobbins — more than a hundred a day, many more than Rakhal could use — was no consolation.

Where was Shombhu Debnath? Where was the Shombhu who had once sat on the stoop of his hut and talked into the night about the cloth he had heard of in the master-weaver’s shed in Tangail? Of abrawan muslins as fine as mountain springs, invisible under the surface of the clearest water; shabnam muslins, which when spread on grass melted into the morning dew; cloth which was thin air, fifteen yards of it no heavier than two handfuls of rice, and yet denser than the thickest wool, with four hundred warp threads to the inch. Shameless, shameless insubstantial cloth, nature’s mirror, carrying on its conscience the curses of the exiled princess who, swathed in thirty yards of it, had stepped into her father’s court, for all the world to see, mother naked and beautiful. Where was that Shombhu Debnath?

When, when would Shombhu Debnath begin to teach him?

Never, said Maya, rocking back on her heels as she squatted beside Alu, watching him at the wheel. Rakhal’s right; he’ll never teach you.

Alu’s hand slipped, and next moment his fingers and the wheel were wrapped in a tangled cat’s-cradle of yarn. Mortified, Alu began disentangling the yarn. Maya watched him, sucking her lip. Then she hissed: What’s the use of your learning this? This is real work; you’ll never be able to do it. Go back to your school and your books.

Alu had most of the yarn wrapped around his open palm. He bit through a knot and spat out the metallic sharpness of dye and starch. Do you hear me? Maya said. Go back home; this is real work. You’ll never learn to do it.

Alu had the yarn disentangled and wound tightly around his palm. He began to lay it out in loops so he could start again. You’re proud you can wind a bobbin, aren’t you? Maya said, dark eyes flashing. Do you know what this is? This is children’s work; children do it when they’re eight. That’s what you’re doing — children’s work — even though you’ve got hair bursting out of your clothes.

Unsteadily Alu ran a sweating palm over the rim of the wheel and gave it a trial spin. Little boy, hissed Maya, playing with toys. Why don’t you get out of your shorts and back into your cradle?

Alu, suddenly a child again, knocked the wheel aside. He lunged forward and pushed her over. Trembling, he watched her pick herself up and brush the dust off her worn red sari. That’s right, she cried. Hit me. You’ll never be good for any real work.

She spat into the dust. Alu saw her brush the end of her sari across her eyes. She turned and ran into her hut.

Rakhal had left his loom. He was leaning against the shed, watching him. It’s true, he said. You’re really in trouble. You’re caught between two madmen, and who can tell what a madman will do or a goat will eat? Maya’s right; you should get out of this while you still can.

But at the end of that month, when Balaram punctually handed Maya her father’s fees yet again, she took the notes to her father, and held them up in both hands: I’m tearing these.

But why? Shombhu said. His fees had fuelled a new fondness for arrack. He was in no mood to have his money torn up.

Because it’s stolen money, Maya said. He’s paying you to teach him weaving, and you’ve taught him nothing.

Shombhu snatched the money from her and stormed out of the courtyard. That night they heard him giving vent to an impassioned, night-jarring Raga Kelenga on some distant branch.

Next morning he was in the courtyard, waiting for Alu, sucking on his hookah.

Warping first: no weft without a warp.

Other weavers with only a loom or two usually had their warps sized and wound by contractors. Not Shombhu Debnath. Somehow he had acquired a drum and frames for his own warp beams.

So Alu learnt how to arrange bobbins of yarn on the hundreds of spindles on the warping frames, so that they ran true to the warp drum; he learnt to conjure up patterns by arranging bobbins of different colours on different parts of the frames; he learnt to thread the ends of the yarn through a wooden board, like a racket, with hundreds of metal eyes, so that the yarn would not tangle on its journey to the drum; he learnt to wind the drum, so that it drew the yarn into it, like a lake swallowing a waterfall. And so on, often mere tedium, changing bobbins when they ran out, rethreading them through the board, twisting together the ends of broken threads.

Days of work, painstaking, eye-crossing work, to wind one warp beam properly. But sometimes there was a kind of music to it, when the drum was turning well, clattering on its hinges, and the yarn was whirling through the eyes of the board, like a stream shooting through rapids.

And then, one day, Shombhu at last led Alu to a loom. Alu, in his eagerness, would have jumped straight down to the bench, but Shombhu’s hand was on his shoulder. He smiled his cracked, discoloured smile: You have to know what it is first.

The machine, like man, is captive to language.

So that was another month gone, a labour of a different kind.

Shombhu Debnath squats by the loom with Alu beside him. He points with his cane at a heavy beam. He opens his mouth, he would speak, but lo! the loom has knotted his tongue. So many names, so many words, words beaten together in the churning which created the world: Tangail words, stewed with Noakhali words, salted with Naboganj words, boiled up with English (picked up who knows where in his years of wandering). Words, words, this village teems with words, yet too few to speak of the world and the machine. Such wealth and such oppression: to survive a man must try twice as hard, pour out words, whatever comes his way, and hope …

Kol-norod, Shombhu shouts, pointing with his cane. Kol-norod in Noakhali, nata-norod in Tangail, cloth beam in English.

Then his cane switches to the other end of the loom: bhim-norod in Noakhali, pancha-norod in Tangail, warp beam in English. Understood? All right now — his cane points back at the cloth beam — in Tangail?

Alu hesitates, and a fraction of a second later a weal is reddening on his back. Shombhu Debnath smiles: You have to study hard, you know. We sucked it all in through our mother’s tits.

So many words, so many things. On a loom a beam’s name changes after every inch. Why? Every nail has a name, every twist of rope, every little eyelet, every twig of bamboo on the heddle. A loom is a dictionaryglossarythesaurus. Why? Words serve no purpose; nothing mechanical. No, it is because the weaver, in making cloth, makes words, too, and trespassing on the territory of the poets gives names to things the eye can’t see. That is why the loom has given language more words, more metaphor, more idiom than all the world’s armies of pen-wielders.

And so it went on.

It was hard, but at the end of a month Alu, his back matted with scars, could name every nail and every join on the fly-shuttle loom. And so at last Shombhu Debnath could stop him no longer from climbing into the loom’s pit.

Actually weaving is simple. All it is is a technique for laying a cross-thread, called the weft or woof, between parallel long threads, called the warp, at right angles. To do this, it is enough to part the warp threads so that the weft can be passed through, and then close them again so that they lock the weft in place. That is all it is and it rules all cloth (except bashed, beaten things like felt, which, despite dictionaries, is not cloth), in all times and in all the realms of the world. The machines change as dizzily as all appearances; there are dummy-shuttle looms and rapier looms and water-jet looms and circular looms. But the changes are merely mechanical, they have to do with speed and bulk and quality. The essence of cloth — locking yarns together by crossing them — has not changed since prehistory.

It’s so simple, Alu said with a conqueror’s elation. It took no more than a day to learn, just a matter of coordination: tug on the shuttle-cord once and the shuttle flies across with the weft, press the right pedal and the warp closes on the weft, push the reed once towards you and the cloth grows by another minute fraction of an inch, then tug the shuttle-cord again … like a dance, one way, then another, hands and feet together.

Yes, said Shombhu Debnath. Plain white cloth, like you’re weaving, is simple. You’ll find out how simple it is if you ever get past that.

Alu paid him no attention. He had his reward at last: a five-yard length of cloth. Maya cut it from the cloth beam for him. You’ll never learn, she said, folding it. Go back to your books. But she smiled.

Alu walked sedately out of the courtyard, the cloth folded under his arm. When he reached the bamboos he began to run. He bounded into Balaram’s study and shouted: Look, the first bit of cloth I’ve woven. But Balaram was away, dousing the village in antiseptic.

It didn’t matter, for Alu was already in a dream. It took him barely a week to master the weaving of ordinary white cloth. At the end of the week the loom, rattling faster than it ever had before, had thrown out a waterfall of cloth.

But Shombhu Debnath curled his lip. He looked at the bale Alu had woven, and snorted: How old are you?

Fifteen, Alu said, sixteen soon.

Shame, said Shombhu. We used to do better than that when we were ten.

But, again, Maya smiled.

At the end of the week, Shombhu Debnath moved Alu on to coloured cloth. The simplest first, a weft of one shade and a warp of another — no different, really, from weaving plain cloth. Then real patterns: checks which needed two changes of shuttle for every inch; then bordered stripes and even bordered checks.

Alu learnt quicker than Shombhu Debnath could teach. His loom poured out rainbows of cloth with magical ease.

Fast, too fast, faster than Maya could wind bobbins. Maya had to appeal to Rakhal for help. But Rakhal, proudly, had no time. He was busy at last. He had saved enough money to join the Bruce Lee kung fu class (daily 7 a.m.; fees weekly) near the ancient banyan of Poramatola in Naboganj. He was working furiously himself, after his classes, to earn money for his bus fares and for fees for months and months ahead. So Maya, disappointed, had to hire bobbins out to families with lots of little children, so that Alu would have enough yarn for the maws of his loom.

And Alu wove still faster. His hands flew like pistons; the shuttle became a wooden blur, its knocking, as it hit the sides of the batten, merged and rose into a whine. Maya marvelled at last; she had never seen such speed, and that night Alu somersaulted all the way back through the bamboo forest.

Alu was peacock-proud. He longed to preen, to spread the feathers of his skill. But Lalpukur was churning like cement in a grinder, and Balaram was busy chasing its shooting boundaries with buckets of carbolic acid, his hair wafting behind him, in the germ-free air; Toru-debi was fouled in the tangles of her buttonless blouse; and, as for Shombhu Debnath, he had taken to disappearing again, all through the day, and in the chaos of that churning no one knew where he went.

Alu had to be content with quantity. In two weeks he wove seventy-five violently coloured lungis. It was something tangible. After he cut the seventy-fifth from the cloth beam he and Maya laid them out in the courtyard and waited late into the evening for Shombhu Debnath.

But Shombhu Debnath was unimpressed when he arrived at last, panting and damp with evening dew. He dismissed the carpet of cloth with a wave: Simple patterns; a boy could do it.

Then, teach me better ones, Alu retorted.

Too fast, said Shombhu Debnath, you’re going too fast.

But, still, between disappearances he taught Alu to tie the heddle of his loom for grainy tabby weaves: two adjacent strings of the warp, instead of the usual alternate, in a regular series across the beam, crossed with two picks of the weft instead of one. He taught him dizzying spectroscopic patterns, spiralling combinations of eight, ten, twelve colours. He banished the coarse yarn Alu had started with and warped his loom with fine, delicate cotton instead — 80, 100, 120 warp threads to the inch. Be careful, he said, this yarn tears if the shuttle so much as touches it.

Alu’s loom swallowed it faster than Maya and all her hired bobbin-winders could feed it. In another two weeks Alu had woven 120 lungis.

They stared at the pile aghast, as they might at the sulky rage of a jackfruit tree bombarding the earth with heedless profusion, pouring down more fruit in a day than a district could eat in a week. Who would buy so much cloth? There was enough to crowd several shopkeepers out of their counters.

It was Rakhal who came up with the solution.

Listen, he said to Alu. I’ll sell your cloth in Naboganj. I have to go there for my classes anyway, and I know Naboganj. I’ll get a better price for you than you’d ever be able to get yourself. No one argues with me. But you’ll have to give me a tenth part of the money I earn you, and you’ll have to pay for my kung fu classes. You’ll be able to afford it.

That’s fine, said Maya. That’s settled, then.

Rakhal leapt into the air. He bent his right leg back under him, while the other shot out, parallel to the ground, pointing forward. His palm opened stiffly, swung out sideways and crashed into one of the bamboo pillars of the loom-shed. A corner of the shed buckled and slumped over. The scar on Rakhal’s cheek suddenly blazed crimson. A scream tore out of his bowels, sending a cloud of birds into the air, twittering with alarm.

He’s pleased, Maya explained.

Yes, Rakhal grinned, I’m pleased. He struck another bamboo pole with his palm. Half the shed collapsed, covering his loom with straw. And I’ll tell you a secret, he said. Soon I won’t ever have to touch a loom again. I’m getting a job — of a different kind. I’m going to be rich.

Tell us, Alu and Maya chorused, tell us, Rakhal-da, tellustellustellus.

No, said Rakhal, narrow-eyed, mysterious. It’s a secret.

They saw very little of him in the next fortnight. He left early every morning with a few lungis wrapped up in a bundle and came back late without them. But one evening he returned with a bigger, heavier bundle than he had taken with him that morning. No bundle of cloth, that was for sure. He carried it through the courtyard carefully, on his shoulders, and darted straight into his hut and hid it away under the thatch, ignoring Alu and Maya’s stares.

The next day he did not go to Naboganj. At midday Alu and Maya saw him going into the bamboo forest with the bundle perched on his shoulders. Going into the forest so late, Rakhal-da? Alu shouted. Constipation?

Rakhal didn’t deign to answer. So naturally Alu and Maya stole into the forest behind him.

They found him all but invisible in a copse, a small fortress of bamboo. He was sitting, legs folded, on a patch of grass. There were piles all around him: piles of old bottles and tin cans, of oriole-yellow powder, rusty nails and metal scraps, broken razor blades, torn rags, and other steel-grey and nondescript powders. He was working busily, filling bottles with powders and scraps, stuffing their necks with rags.

Rakhal heard a rustle in the bamboo and looked up. He saw them, four large, curious, wondering eyes in the bamboo. Get away from here, he growled. This is secret.

What are those things, Rakhal-da? Alu asked.

Get out, Rakhal shouted. But they were far beyond his reach and he had a half-full bottle on his lap.

What are they, Rakhal-da? Alu asked again.

Rakhal hesitated, drawing a finger over his lips. He could not help stiffening with pride.

They’re bombs, he said. Bombs.

Bombs! they chorused.

Yes, he smiled, bombs. He looked anxiously at them. Of course, he added quickly, they’re simple. Don’t think I don’t know that. This is just to begin with. They’ll teach me the difficult ones later.

Alu and Maya looked at him in silence. You have to start somewhere, he said apologetically. I’ll be doing better soon.

But, Rakhal-da, Alu said, what will you do with them?

Make money, he answered. There’s a good market for them. Because of the war, you know.

What war? said Alu.

Not that one. Rakhal waved a dismissive hand at the eastern horizon beyond the bamboos. There’s a war in the towns, too. They need bombs. You watch; I’ll be rich.

They did not answer. Maya raised the end of her sari to cover her open mouth. Alu stared at the piles in front of Rakhal, biting his lip. All of a sudden Rakhal whipped around, picked up a bottle and threw it high into the air.

Alu and Maya, sprinting through the bamboo, heard it smash harmlessly somewhere behind them. They heard Rakhal call out, laughing: There’s nothing in it … But they did not stop running till they reached the safety of the courtyard.

Alu leapt panting on to his bench at his loom. He had no time for bombs. At last, after days and days of persuasion, argument and reluctance, Shombhu Debnath had promised to teach him jamdani weaving.

The first lesson was a disappointment. Shombhu Debnath handed him a six-inch steel needle with a hook at one end. Get to know it like you know your own tool, he said. Better; you’ll use it more. That’ll be your god now. Kamthakur. The god of work. The god of jamdani.

Not much of a god, said Alu, fingering the hook.

You’ll find out, Shombhu Debnath smiled. You’ll find out if you ever learn.

For a long time it seemed as though he never would. His hands, too long accustomed to brute speed, fumbled when Shombhu Debnath tried to teach him to use the kamthakur to insert bits of coloured yarn parallel to the weft, between the warp strings of a ground-cloth. Every slip meant a tangle of torn warp yarn and an hour spent twisting the frayed ends of the delicate yarn together again. So every tangle meant a swish of Shombhu Debnath’s cane, and a stinging cut across the shoulder and a jubilant smile: I told you so. You’ll never learn. It’s not in your blood.

Then, when he ought to have thrown the shuttle lightly across to fix the inlaid yarn into the ground-cloth with the weft, instead, out of habit, he would slam the shuttle across and the reed after it, like a stonemason wielding a jack-hammer, and the painfully inserted strip of yarn would become a thin smudge, when it ought to have stood out proudly, like a bas-relief, on the cloth. More swishes, more weals, more triumphant You’ll-never-learns.

Alu ignored his smarting back and struggled to steady his hands. It was a bitter fight: to have to be a child again after once having conquered the loom. The trick was patience. He warred on himself, with Maya urging him on, until his thirst for speed ebbed away. Slowly, with joint-numbing pain, his fingers grew in deftness and skill. Through the whir of Shombhu Debnath’s cane he learnt to build patterns — small geometrical ones first — with the tiny lengths of coloured yarn. Bleary-eyed, squinting, he learnt to cover a whole six-yard sari with figured patterns after a fortnight’s back-breaking work.

And Shombhu Debnath drove him still harder, leaning over his shoulder as he sat at the loom, the cane poised over his knuckles. He started him on the classic patterns, the butis of jamdani: the simple star, the tara-buti, and the heart-shaped pan-buti. He made him draw the patterns on paper first, and taught him to hold the pencilled outlines beneath the warp so that his kamthakur, sifting between thousands of fine warp threads, would never vary in its precision by so much as a frayed strand of cotton.

Alu’s butis spun out of his loom: perfect, precise, without blemish.

Shombhu Debnath stopped watching him and began to disappear into the forests again. But every week he would leave a carelessly drawn pattern on Alu’s loom. From those tattered messages Alu put together the lotus, poddo-buti, and the intricate ghor-buti, row after row of figured houses, abstractions of shelter and peace. For his labours he earned tooth-rattling thumps on his back from Rakhal: the traders of Naboganj were willing to pay half as much again over the usual price for his cloth. Money at last; plenty of it.

And then, one morning, Shombhu Debnath in a final challenge threw down a pattern which covered his whole loom. Alu hardly slept for days on end. At the end of it his loom rolled out six yards covered with the dazzling pointillism of the hundred thousand diamonds, the lokhkhohira-buti.

Give me another, another buti, something harder still, Alu begged, at the feet of the Master.

Shombhu Debnath turned his face away: I have nothing more to teach you. The time has come for you to grow from an apprentice to a weaver. Skill is not enough; you have all that you ever will. Technique is just the beginning. The world is your challenge now. Look around you and see if your loom can encompass it.

Alu looked.

Bomb-buti? Too dull, too easy, bottles and scraps and hints of blood. Refugee-buti? Too much corrugated iron and leaning tin sheets. Some angles were impossible with a kamthakur. War-buti? Too much chaos; the loom demands order. Antiseptic-buti? Buckets in the air?

Instead, Alu conjured up six yards of majestic howdah’d elephants, trunks curled over villages, lords of the world.

Politics-buti; nothing more immediate in the world, for that very week Bhudeb Roy had answered the call of the People and mounted a caparisoned elephant and toured Lalpukur and the villages around it to announce his plunge, his nose-dive, his lake-emptying leap into politics. Hundreds of the People had followed him, racing after the elephant, pushing and jostling, fighting to get at its shit. Elephant droppings make good manure.

Nervously Alu spread six yards of politics-buti in front of Shombhu Debnath.

Shombhu Debnath’s red eyes flamed. He snatched up the cloth and ripped it apart. He flung it on the earth and ground it into the dust with his bare feet. He spat upon it, blew his nose upon it, and tried to vomit. When he finished there was no cloth left. Five hundred rupees of cotton and sweat swallowed by the dust.

Filth, he said, filth; uglier than the man and filthier. He smiled at Alu, not in triumph, but sadly: You can never learn jamdani because jamdani is dead, with the world which made it. Beauty doesn’t exist; it is made like words or forts, by speakers and listeners, warriors and defenders, weavers and wearers. That world has washed away. Jamdani is only a toy for the wives of contractors and mahajans now. Stop now: no one can make a thing beautiful alone. No one would understand him. Only a madman would try. Stop now, or you’ll be nothing but a toymaker, piecing together your politics-butis with these elephants and the filth that rides on them.

Shombhu Debnath was suddenly leering at him; his mouth fallen open, baring teeth that dripped like fangs. No, he said. I can’t allow that. Wait. Wait a moment. I’ll get you a knife. You can cut your thumbs off and give them to me. I’ll pickle them in mustard oil and chillis and hang them up for the village to see — Alu grown to manhood at last.

Alu turned and ran — away from Shombhu Debnath’s red eyes, his dripping blackened teeth, and ashen knot poised on his head like a nesting cobra — straight back to the safety of his loom. He sat there for a day and a half, scratching on cloth with his kamthakur. And then, one morning, while the village shook with the thunder of planes flying eastwards, his shuttle began its knocking again.

By the time Maya came back from Balaram’s house, he had two rows finished. He called out to her and pushed the heddle up so that she could see the figures fresh upon the cloth.

What is it? she said, gazing at the cloth: firm, tip-tilted, dimpled shapes, like green mangoes on a branch.

What do you think it is? said Alu.

I don’t know, said Maya. What?

It’s Maya-buti.

Maya-buti! The back of her hand rose to cover her mouth. She shook with stifled laughter.

What’s the matter? said Alu. Don’t you like it? She kept her face covered.

All right, said Alu. He picked up a blade and bent down to cut the pattern off the loom. Maya darted forward and caught his hand. No, she cried. Let them be.

Alu sank back to the bench, and she drew her hand slowly back. He turned away, his fists clenched. Maya, he called out.

What?

Do you think if I talked to Balaram we could get married?

Married? Maya whispered. She sank on to her knees beside him. How could we get married? You’re only sixteen; barely out of shorts.

What do you mean? Alu said angrily. Half the boys of my age in the village are already married.

Yes, said Maya, but their uncles aren’t schoolteachers.

That doesn’t matter; I’ll talk to him.

No, said Maya sadly. I can’t get married. Not now. Not till Rakhal marries. She raised her voice and shouted above the drone of another flight of planes: Who would look after them? And then a voice burst upon them, a hoarse, piercing wail. Maya leapt back and turned away, and a moment later Shombhu Debnath staggered into the courtyard. He made his way across, weaving drunkenly, and leant against one of the poles of the loom-shed. He thrust his face forward at Alu, until it was so close that Alu could feel the toddy steaming off his own face. No time for your butis now, he said. The radio’s declared war, real war, with armies and planes.

Shombhu Debnath was wrong; not about the war, but about the butis.

With the beginning of the war, the stream pouring over the border became a deluge. The boundaries of Lalpukur began to outrun Balaram and his buckets of carbolic. Balaram ran out of money. The new refugees hardly had bodies; they hadn’t even the strength to laugh when he tried to raise a collection.

Balaram gave up. He staggered, exhausted, back to his study with a bucket in his hands. He put it on his knees and stared into its dry bottom. He reached into it, wet his fingers with the last few diluted drops of antiseptic and anointed his forehead. Beaten, he said. Beaten by filthy money.

But that very day Rakhal handed Alu more money than he had ever earned before. The busy traders of Naboganj (who were as busy as ever, following laws no war could suspend) had fought grim internecine battles of their own, over Maya-buti, and money had poured out of their ironclad purses. So Alu worked as he had never worked before and Balaram had money for a new antiseptic offensive.

How tortuous, said Balaram, taking Alu’s money, is the path of reason.

Later it was a puzzle. Sub-Inspector Jyoti Das lost himself in that labyrinth of cause and effect. While writing his report he found a newspaper-cutting in the file; a yellowed scrap of paper, left there perhaps by some conscientious clerk. ‘Teacher battles with germs,’ it said, ‘saves thousands.’ The report claimed that Lalpukur had stayed germ-free when thousands of other villages on the border were consumed by disease, because of the efforts of one Balaram Bose, a teacher, who had doused the village in waves of antiseptic.

Even cheap disinfectants cost money. How could he afford it? Jyoti Das wondered. After all, Lalpukur wasn’t Calcutta with its fund-raising drives, women’s clubs melting discarded jewellery, and eager schoolboys skewering flags into collars, pinning them to the war effort.

He was in school, too, then, but the phalanxes of fund-raisers had not claimed him. He had had to live with a different worry. What would the purple herons do that winter? Where would they go, with shrieking planes circling their retreat and the air thick with the dust of worriers and warriors? The herons proved hardier than he had imagined. They were in the lake at the zoo as they always were, supercilious, undismayed by human strife.

But the antiseptic?

Extremists have money, said the Deputy Inspector-General, chewing cryptically. It comes across the border. That’s why they’re extremists.

Jyoti Das was not wholly satisfied. He put the matter to Bhudeb Roy, not without a note of accusation, for the only reference to Balaram in Bhudeb Roy’s reports of that period was a short note which claimed that Balaram had wilfully and maliciously destroyed his best cabbage patch by drenching it with disinfectant.

How is it, Bhudeb-babu, said Jyoti Das, that your reports mentioned nothing of this business of fighting disease and all that?

I was busy then, Bhudeb Roy smiled blandly, with political matters.

Jyoti Das persisted: But tell me, Bhudeb-babu, where did he find the money for the antiseptic?

Who knows? Bhudeb Roy said with a vague wave. There was so much chaos then, the war seemed to be right in the village.

Yes? Jyoti Das prompted.

But he never had an answer. Bhudeb Roy didn’t wish to speak of it. The war was right on us then, he said abruptly. It fell on us.

It did. It fell after a day of fearful silence, when a mist hung about the village till midday, and a gathering expectancy snaked through the huts and houses and hung in the air, as real and prickly as knotted hessian.

It was a day when people huddled into their houses and shacks. Nobody wanted to let themselves out into the fingers of the fog, though nobody could have said why. Perhaps it was the silence; the sudden muffling of the usual far-away bursts of shooting.

It grew worse as the day wore on. Early in the evening the fog crawled out of the ponds again, and a still, fetid dampness clamped itself on the village. It reached everywhere. It crept into Alu’s loom and dampened the warp yarn and made it stick. Alu had to work slowly, painfully prising the yarn apart. He would have stopped, but a consignment had been promised to a hungry merchant in Naboganj and the work had to be done.

As the murky twilight was fading away, Maya brought him a kerosene-lamp, and hung it from a nail in the loom-shed. Where’s Rakhal? Alu asked.

In Naboganj, she answered.

And your father?

She jerked her head at his hut. He’s in there, I think, she said. Sleeping.

She went to the kitchen and put a match to a lamp’s wick. It would not light. She shook it and tried again. At that moment the roar of a plane overhead broke clammily through the fog, shaking the courtyard. The lamp fell from her hands and smashed on the earth. The flames leapt up for a moment, on the spilt kerosene, and died away. Maya stood transfixed for a moment, looking down at the blackened oil. Then she hitched up her sari and ran across the courtyard to the loom-shed.

What’s the matter? said Alu, looking up from the loom.

I’m afraid. She reached forward and put a hand on his shoulder. She stood there for a while, watching him. Then she slipped down to the bench and Alu felt her thighs beside his and smelt her smoky warmth. He put out his hand and touched her cheek. She turned all at once, and threw her legs across his, and sat straddling him, her face on his, bouncing with the rhythm of his legs as they pushed the pedals of the loom. Don’t stop, she whispered urgently into his ear, he’ll wake up if you do.

Alu jerked on the shuttle-cord again, and the shuttle shot across, while she tore at the buttons of his trousers, ripped them off and thrust her hands inside. Don’t stop, she hissed again. Then, with a heave of her hips, she threw her thin sari up, past her waist. She flung her arms around his neck, pressed her knees to his ribs, and sank upon him.

Don’t stop, she cried into his ear, faster, and the shuttle pounded through the parted, twitching limbs of the warp, and the cloth poured out, tangled and damp; gushed forth, in a surge of joyful abundance, till the sky burst, with an explosion which sent a gale tearing through the bamboos and seared the tips of the mango trees, and the fog flared scarlet over the village while hundreds of glowing sparks fell out of the sky.

The whole village was running, stumbling through the fog, before Alu and Maya were out of the courtyard. They picked their way through the murky darkness of the bamboo thickets, tripping on shoots and stumps, helping each other along. Then at the edge of the thickets they heard someone crashing through the bamboo. The noise grew louder and they stopped, holding each other’s hand, and peered into the grey fog. They could see nothing but the swaying outlines of bamboo. Then the footsteps were upon them, and Maya screamed.

It’s only me, Shombhu Debnath gasped, panting for breath.

Maya, stupefied: But weren’t you at home, sleeping?

No, no, he said. He smiled crookedly. I’m going home now. Now, go. Run. Go and see. It’s a plane, fallen out of the sky, on the school.

He stumbled off in the darkness, and they ran out of the bamboos, into the lanes, and with the rest of the village they poured down into the school, and craned over the shoulders of the crowd which had got there before them and caught a glimpse of a flaming fuselage, driven into the earth like a broken stake.

Beside it, sitting quite still, legs crossed, her face brilliantly lit by the flames, was Parboti-debi. She was staring up into the sky, oblivious of the crowd, all her haggardness vanished, smiling serenely, gratefully.

Chapter Four. Signs of New Times

The plane was like an exclamation mark fallen on Lalpukur from the sky. The war ended a few days after the crash, and not long after some of the refugees flowed back to the new country across the border, and the others wandered off to the cities or spread out over the country. Soon they were half-forgotten.

But nobody in Lalpukur forgot the crash.

The professional interpreters of portents split immediately: a proper fight had long been in the offing anyway, ever since the numerologists had ganged up with the astrologers against the palmists and sabotaged a move for a licensing system and a union to guarantee uniform rates for predictions irrespective of methods used. After the crash things took a new turn. The numerologists assumed the leadership of the End of the World Signalled camp and heaped scorn on the palmists and their theory of Signs of New Times. Whose palm do you read an aircrash on? they sneered. God’s? The astrologers, warily neutral for once, took the conservative view that it meant nothing at all: crashes and tempests and earthquakes were normal in Kaliyug. What else could you expect in the Age of Evil?

But they’re wrong, said Balaram, telling Gopal the story on his veranda in Calcutta. If it has no meaning, why would it happen? Of course it has a meaning, but the meaning must be read rationally — not with the hocus-pocus of these Stone Age magicians.

Balaram stopped and looked at Gopal with a hint of a challenge glinting in his eyes. Of course, he said, some people think it rational to believe that events don’t have a meaning.

Gopal looked away and blew wearily into his cup of tea. With Balaram forty years weren’t enough to forget an argument.

Balaram was lying in a chaotic, noisy general ward in the Medical College Hospital, his legs encased in plaster, like gigantic boiled eggs. He could have had a private room had he wished. Dantu and the others who had rushed down from the first-floor balcony to the flower-bed where Balaram lay writhing in agony had tried to persuade him to take one. They knew his father could afford it. But even then, between screams of pain, Balaram had managed to sob: No, my father mustn’t know. So Balaram had gone into the general ward and Dantu had decided not to write to his father about the accident.

Accident, he called it. There were others at that fateful meeting at the top of the stairs on the first floor of the Presidency College building (led by Middle Parting and his unremorseful friends) who called it the Fool’s Fall.

Almost two days had passed before Gopal heard of it. One evening Dantu, his hollow face haggard and strained, knocked at the door of the room he was staying in then. Gopal, he said pleading, sucking his teeth in distress, can you come with me to see Balaram now? I can’t face him alone — not with what I have to say to him.

Come where? Gopal said in surprise.

To the hospital, of course.

Hospital? Gopal cried. What do you mean?

Dantu took off his spectacles and squinted at him: Don’t you know? And then he hit himself on the thigh. Of course, he exclaimed, no one remembered to tell you about it. I was too busy with Balaram in the hospital, and the other Rationalists … well, there aren’t any other Rationalists now. Those who haven’t gone over to the Science Association are busy trying to keep out of sight.

Gopal caught his arm and dragged him into the room, and later they almost ran all the way to the hospital. When they reached the foot of Balaram’s bed, Gopal saw him smiling through the twin white mounds of his plastered legs and he collapsed on to a chair.

Balaram surveyed them calmly: Well? There was no answer. Gopal panted helplessly, staring at the white expanse of plaster. In the end it was Dantu who broke the silence.

Balaram, he said abruptly, I’ve come to tell you that I’m leaving the Rationalists, too.

Balaram nodded as though he had expected it; and Dantu, who had braced himself for an argument, was suddenly deflated. I told you, he said weakly, I told you it wouldn’t work. I told you it was a mad idea.

Balaram shrugged, smiling: But I had to try, didn’t I? Grimacing, Dantu began to drum on the rusty steel bedpost.

And you, Dantu? Balaram said. Are you joining the Science Association, too?

Dantu snorted: You should know better than that, Balaram. He began to say something else, stopped, and toed the floor meditatively. Then with a long sigh he patted Balaram’s plaster casts. All right, Balaram, he said, I’ll go now.

Quickly Balaram called out: Wait. He reached under his pillow and drew out a book wrapped in a tattered brown-paper cover. Give me your pen, he said to Gopal and, taking it, began to scribble on the title-page.

When he had finished he held the book out to Dantu. Here’s something for you, he said gravely. Look after it; put it in that old bookcase of yours.

The book fell open in Dantu’s hands and he saw that it was the Life of Pasteur. Biting his lip, he squeezed Balaram’s shoulder. Don’t worry, he said. I’ll look after it. He raised the book in a brief salute, and hurried away.

Don’t lose it, Balaram called out after him. You’ll need it someday; someday it’ll help you remember Reason.

It’s all my fault, Gopal said afterwards, wringing his hands. I’m responsible, no one else. I shouldn’t have let it happen.

What could you have done? said Balaram.

I don’t know, but I shouldn’t have let it happen. I knew it would happen, I knew it. I should never have let you become president of the Rationalists. I foresaw it: I knew you would bring disaster on yourself and the society if you ever became president.

Balaram laughed and winced a moment later, as a spasm of pain shot out of his legs. Do you really think, he groaned, that there was anything you could do about it? You’re wrong if you do. Nothing you or I could have done would have made any difference. This happened because it had to happen. There’s a meaning in it — for me.

Oh God, thought Gopal, he’s going to start lecturing again, in this state. Aloud he said: Balaram, don’t start making up one of your theories again. There’s no meaning in this. It was just an accident. You shouldn’t have run and you shouldn’t have jumped. They wouldn’t have done anything at all. It was just a moment’s foolishness — an accident. Now you should rest.

Balaram pounced on the inconsistency: If it was just an accident, why did you say you shouldn’t have let it happen? Nobody can prevent accidents.

Gopal, confused, said huffily: Don’t be silly, Balaram, and you shouldn’t argue in this state. It was an accident. Everybody says so. And accidents happen by chance. Chance doesn’t have a meaning — that’s why it’s chance.

Balaram chuckled with delight and winced again. An event, he said, is what you make of it. You don’t really believe it was an accident, either. It had a meaning, and you know what the meaning was. You just said so. I shouldn’t have run. I should have stood my ground. I know that now, and next time I shall stand my ground, for Reason has nothing to fear.

Balaram, Gopal said wearily, it was just an accident.

It wasn’t any ordinary accident, Balaram said. And the proof of it is that it fell into the lap of the man who could make the best use of it. All right, you tell me, when that plane had a whole country, a whole state, a whole district, a whole village to choose from, why did it crash on Bhudeb Roy’s school, a few yards away from his wife? Why?

Why? echoed Gopal.

Because that plane was a gift from the sky.

And from the very first hour Bhudeb Roy showed that he was not the man to throw away a gift.

After he had led Parboti-debi back to the safety of their house, he went back to the school and took charge at once of the villagers’ haphazard fire-fighting efforts. Under his coolly efficient direction they soon reduced the flaming wreck to a sizzling, steaming heap of metal. But they could not prevent more than half the school from burning down. When the last embers were finally stamped out, only a few rooms, including Bhudeb Roy’s office, were left standing.

Bhudeb Roy did not pause for an instant. He called for the tough young men who collected his rents from the shanties. At the same time he sent his sons out to recruit a few more. Within half an hour he had twenty willing and hungry young recruits. He armed them with stout wooden sticks and ordered them to herd the villagers out of the school grounds. When that was done he deployed them around the school and left them to guard it through the night.

Next morning, after breakfasting, he went to the school and conducted a careful inspection to make sure that the wreck of the aeroplane had not been tampered with at night. Then he had his office desk carried out. He placed it carefully in the shade of a remnant of the school’s veranda. He wedged himself behind it, spread a cash register open and sent his sons out to let it be known that he was ready to take bids.

Soon a crowd thronged into the school, and Bhudeb Roy was glad that he had had the foresight to organize a private army to keep things under control. Under the watchful eyes of his lean young men, the bids poured in, in a well-organized, disciplined kind of way.

Bolai-da decided that the metal sheets of the fuselage would make a good roof for his expanding cycle and hardware shop. It would be a kind of advertisement as well: people would go out of their way to visit a shop which had an aeroplane for a roof. And, besides, at the time business was so good that he had money to waste. So he made an opening bid of five hundred rupees. But other people had the same idea. In the long run good steel or aluminium or whatever it was, polished and factory-made anyway, would be cheaper than corrugated iron. In the end Bolai-da outlasted the others — he was a little carried away by the sight of all that shining silvery metal and its cabalistic decorations of figures and numbers — but he had to pay almost a thousand rupees.

Parts of the wings sold well, too: people bought them to put across ditches and canals as tidy little bridges. Bhudeb Roy managed to coax a total of five bridges out of those two wings. He sold them for four hundred rupees each. There were good bits of glass to dispose of after that, and rubber, and a whole heap of nuts and bolts.

Bhudeb Roy did well that day. In the evening, after every little scrap had been sold, he plodded back to his house, happily rubbing the folds of flesh on the back of his neck. He called his sons into a room and passed around wads of notes. He smiled as he watched them sensuously running their fingers over the rustling paper. That’s right, he said, his tiny eyes bulging. You can’t ever know what money means unless you feel it.

Later, he assembled his twenty or so young men outside his house and handed out bonuses. They had hardly dared expect so much money so soon. They burst into cheers — jug-jug-jiyo, Bhudeb-dada, jug-jug-jiyo — and ran off to their shacks and shanties to buy food for their families. That was perhaps the only false note in the whole day. They were gone by the time Bhudeb Roy had heaved himself up the stairs to his balcony so that he would be able to acknowledge their cheers properly. He found himself waving and bowing at an empty courtyard. But he didn’t let it spoil his mood; later he could teach them to do things properly. At that moment he had nothing but goodwill for the world. In his elation, he even told one of his sons to take a sackful of coconuts over to Balaram’s house.

You see, Toru-debi told Balaram in the kitchen that night while they were eating their dinner, in his own way Bhudeb-babu really likes you. He respects you; he wants your friendship. He’s a nice man in his own way just like everybody else. If only you read a little less and knew the world a little more.

Balaram frowned and would not look at her. She turned to Alu, who had finished and was sitting quietly on his piri licking his fingers. You tell him, she appealed. You tell him, because he won’t listen to me. Why can’t he just live and let live? Why can’t we just live in peace like everyone else?

Balaram bit grimly into a fried fish-head. Toru-debi looked helplessly at him.

After he had washed his hands Alu went back into the kitchen. Balaram had gone back to his study. Don’t worry, Alu said to Toru-debi. Nothing will happen. She bit her lip and shook her head, trying to keep her tears back. Something will happen, she said. I know it will; I’ve seen it in my dreams. But still I’ll do what I can to stop it. I’ll keep on trying as long as I can.

So the next evening Toru-debi decided to go and meet Parboti-debi. It was a long time since she had left the house, and years since she had been to visit anyone.

Sari chosen, face powdered, she picked her way down the path mumbling: First I’ll say, Parboti, where have you been? haven’t seen you, haven’t seen you for months. And all that. Then: Such nice coconuts … Then: What about some blouses? I’ll make you some blouses. Six.

One of Bhudeb Roy’s sons, swinging on the gate, spotted her coming down the path in a white sari and peacock-green blouse, swinging a brown shopping-bag, her hair hanging down in knots, her face like a streaky white mask. He called out to his brothers and they all ran out to the gate and watched her, sniggering.

They led her into a room that was crowded with cloth-covered sofas and pictures of Bhudeb Roy. She sat down, clutching her empty bag, and said: Parboti …?

She’s sick, said the oldest boy, fingering his moustache. She can’t come out.

Toru-debi waited for ten minutes, surrounded by the boys, while a cup of tea and biscuits were fetched for her. What should I do? she thought, pulling at the knots in her hair. Go away? Stay? How’ll I tell Parboti? She drank her tea so fast it scalded her tongue, and rushed out. She stood under the balcony and shouted up: Parboti, I’ll make you six blouses. Tell Bhudeb-babu. It’s all right: six blouses.

Walking worriedly down the path, swinging her bag, she thought: I’ve done what I can; it’s in Ma Kali’s hands now. Soon she was back listening to the reassuring drone of her sewing machine and the blouses were forgotten.

A few days later the whole village learnt that Bhudeb Roy had been given several thousand rupees by an insurance company as compensation for the burnt parts of the school. Everybody was taken by surprise. Very few people had heard of insurance, and almost no one knew that buildings could be insured. Certainly nobody had known that the school buildings were insured. The question which flew around the banyan tree and the tea-shop and Bolai-da’s shop was when had Bhudeb Roy insured the building.

Soon a curious crowd was paying daily court to Bhudeb Roy. He enjoyed it immensely but made sure his hired men were never too far away to prevent indiscipline. People brought him disputes to settle, questions to answer, and they heard many of his views on the world, but nobody had the courage to put the real question to him.

In the end, by common consent it fell to Bolai-da, because ever since Bolai-da had accompanied Bhudeb Roy on his visit to his patch of toddy palms people had assumed that he had a special claim on Bhudeb Roy. They pushed Bolai-da forward and urged him on, but it took him a while to pick up the courage. Finally, one evening, with fingers prodding him in the small of his back, Bolai-da cleared his throat. By that time, the years had twisted Bolai-da’s face incurably sideways and curved it outwards, like a crescent moon. His lower jaw had moved an inch or so away from the upper, so that he had to speak out of a gap at the corner of his mouth. Bhudeb-babu, he said, squinting with concentration, tell me, when exactly did you insure the school?

Bhudeb Roy, chewing slowly on a plug of tobacco, said: Exactly fifteen days before the crash.

His electrified audience gasped. All those years to do it in, or not to do it in, and he had done it fifteen days before the crash.

Bolai-da swallowed and sucked his teeth. Bhudeb-babu, he said, tell us, did you know?

Bhudeb Roy did not answer. He looked away, into the far distance, and his bulging jaw chewed steadily sideways, while a smile slowly worked its way across it.

That night they went back to Bolai-da’s shop in awestruck silence. Was it possible? No, it couldn’t be. Even Bhudeb Roy couldn’t have shot down a plane all by himself. But, then, said Bolai-da wagging his head, it was certainly more than mere coincidence.

The very next day, with his insurance money in his pocket, Bhudeb Roy hired a truck and took his sons and his twenty young men to Naboganj. He bought them T-shirts and a few knuckledusters and handed out another bonus. On its way back the truck scattered a triumphant cloud of dust over the village, while Bhudeb Roy sat massively enthroned on it, surrounded by his sons and the young men, acknowledging their cheers: jug-jug-jiyo, Bhudeb-dada, jug-jug-jiyo.

All the other hungry young men, sitting under the banyan tree thinking of ways to finance cycle-rickshaws, were lashed by envy when they saw the bright T-shirts flash by. They cursed the fate which had singled out their onetime friends while leaving them stranded under the banyan tree, as hungry as ever. That night they begged Bolai-da: You talk to Bhudeb-babu. He listens to you. Tell him he needs some more people. Bolai-da blew through the corner of his mouth and shook his head: No, no, how can I? And, besides, why me? But of course he was flattered that they had chosen him to be their spokesman, and it did not take them very much longer to persuade him to lead them to Bhudeb Roy’s house.

So, in a procession, with flaming torches, they marched down the lanes, shouting: jug-jug-jiyo, Bhudeb-dada, jug-jug-jiyo. The twenty young men, who were lounging on Bhudeb Roy’s veranda, heard them when they turned into the red-dust path which led to the house. They were not slow to recognize a threat. Snatching up their sticks and their knuckledusters, they rushed out of the house, like wolves swarming to defend a kill. Bhudeb Roy’s sons, who lacked their fine streamlining, floundered after them, panting.

Shatup goddam fool-fuckers, waking Master, shut your traps and all this hungama-business, stinky-smelly goondas and chhokra-boys.

But razor blades and sticks and cycle chains appeared magically in Bolai-da’s followers’ hands, too. So, in a barrage of shouts and insults, the two groups held off for a moment and each managed to push their leaders in front, while somehow conveying the impression that they were actually trying to hold them back.

Bolai-da stepped into the breach. He twisted his face haughtily sideways and out of the corner of his mouth he whistled: We want nothing to do with the likes of you. We want to meet Bhudeb-babu.

Bhudeb Roy heard him, for the commotion had drawn him out into the garden. Let them come in, he roared. I’ll hear them.

The twenty young men drew back, with extreme misgiving. They couldn’t help doling out a few pinches to the stragglers and pulling a bit of hair. Bhudeb Roy rolled his little eyes when he saw the crowd and growled: What is it now, Bolai? Bolai-da smiled his most ingratiating smile and said: Bhudeb-babu, these young fellows want some work, too. They’re as good as the others. Why not hire them, too?

Bhudeb Roy rolled his eyes over the ragged young men and smiled. He put his arm across Bolai-da’s shoulders and led him aside. You see, Bolai, he whispered in a whisper which resounded around the garden, what this village needs is a kick in the arse, something to get it moving. I’ve tried kindness and persuasion but it doesn’t work. There’s something wrong with the basic character of the people. They’re illiterate like you, not educated like me. They need a kick in the arse. But, then, someone has to do the kicking and someone has to provide the arse. If everyone was kicking, do you see what I mean, what would become of the arse? You understand me?

Bolai-da nodded, thinking hard. But then he said: Bhudeb-babu, can’t you give them something to do? How will they live? They need work, too.

Bhudeb Roy thought for a moment and rubbed his huge flat forehead. His fingers touched on a bump and suddenly a smile of dawning revelation spread itself across his jaw. Why, he said, let them make straight lines. Straight lines are the best way of moving ahead, the shortest distance between two points. You tell them that: the need of the hour is straight lines.

The twenty young men, smiling with sly satisfaction, ushered Bolai-da and the others out of the garden.

It was sometime that week that Balaram first noticed the organ of Order sprouting obscenely on Bhudeb Roy’s eyebrows.

About ten days later two jeeps full of uniformed men were spotted turning into the dust track which led off the main road to the village. The village had emptied long before they reached the banyan tree. The blue-uniforms didn’t seem to notice. The jeeps drove straight to the school and the uniformed men fanned out over the yard, inspecting the pit the crash had made and picking up stray nuts and bolts and shavings of metal. Then the jeeps roared and wheeled, and drove straight to Bhudeb Roy’s house.

Nobody ever really learnt what happened there, but over the next two days the blue-uniforms went unerringly to the shops with sheet-metal roofs, the canals bridged by reinforced steel, the rickshaws decorated with shiny bolts, and recovered every last bit of scrap the plane had deposited in the village. All that anyone knew was that when the jeeps drove out ranks of blue-uniformed arms appeared in the windows waving cordially to Bhudeb Roy, and he waved back, smiling happily.

Naturally Bolai-da was chosen to lead the delegation of villagers who marched to Bhudeb Roy’s house to ask for their money back. They were stopped at the gates by the twenty young men and Bolai-da was singled out and led into the house. Bhudeb Roy met him in a dark empty room. His little eyes in their bulging sockets were suddenly very menacing. What do you want? he spat at Bolai-da.

Well, that is to say, Bhudeb-babu, Bolai-da managed to stutter, we were just wondering, since we paid you all that money for those bits of the plane, and since they’ve been taken back now, shouldn’t we — er — perhaps, get our money back? No one richer, no one poorer, all quits.

Bhudeb Roy’s eyebrows shot forward. His jaws opened as though they would have liked to fasten on Bolai-da’s scrawny neck. Be grateful, he roared, that you’re not in gaol for being found in possession of government property. Do you know who you owe it to? Me. Me. Me. Should I charge you lawyer’s fees? You’ll end up even poorer. If you know what’s good for you, you and all your bad-element friends will start working on straight lines instead of hanging around the banyan tree, doing nothing but rearing your heads and thinking anti-social thoughts.

Bolai-da was led out in a hurry by one of the young men. The other young men began to rattle their sticks and shine their knuckledusters, and the whole delegation was soon hurrying down the lane jaldi-toot-sweet.

Nobody ever talked of getting their money back again. After that, people said, not a bird chirruped in Lalpukur but with Bhudeb Roy’s permission, and under the supervision of his twenty young men.

And then, a couple of months later, someone spotted Parboti-debi, who had disappeared for a while, on the veranda of their house. She was unmistakably pregnant.

Calendars of every sort and variety, sweetshop and government-issue, Bikrami, Hegiraic and Gregorian, rustled under the banyan tree that night. The conclusions of the Bikrami were supported by the Hegiraic and were not contradicted by the Gregorian. But still people couldn’t believe it. They woke the oldest midwife in the village and put the problem to her. She had no doubts, either.

The plane had conceived the child. There could be no other conclusion. Nobody could believe Bhudeb Roy capable of fathering another child (though gossip had it that hardly a night passed without his trying). It had to be the plane. Or at any rate it had happened on the night of the crash, which was the same thing. The heavens had intervened. The plane was a gigantic chrome-plated penis thrown down by the skies to Bhudeb Roy’s wife; a sort of metallic, heavenly starch, sent to stiffen Bhudeb Roy’s ageing member.

Bolai-da led another awestruck delegation to Bhudeb Roy. Be generous, Bhudeb-babu, he pleaded. Allow her to come out of her seclusion. After all, if she has the gift, shouldn’t she share it with the rest of the village? The barren women of the village would worship her, and you, if she would only agree just to touch them. Perhaps you could even charge a fee.

Bhudeb Roy was so gratified by the speech that he actually giggled. Nothing would have pleased him more than the buttressing of his mundane powers with an element of the supernatural. Bolai-da swore later that Bhudeb Roy went into the house right then, and for a full half-hour argued with Parboti-debi and scolded her, urging her to go into the village with the delegation. But for once Parboti-debi, usually so compliant, was adamant. She would not go. The delegation returned, disappointed, and nobody saw Parboti-debi again during her confinement.

When the child was born, the whole village was invited to the house to see the baby and feast on sweetmeats, and nobody had any doubts about its divine instigation left.

The child was a girl, and it was well known that Bhudeb Roy had long wished for a daughter. And she was beautiful, far more beautiful than any child Bhudeb Roy could have fathered unaided. She was obviously sickly, but still the most beautiful child anybody had ever seen — eyes like liquid jet, skin like honeyed milk, hair like curled ebony.

Like everybody else, Bhudeb Roy interpreted the birth of the child as a sign. It was probably at that time that he first began to think of closing the school down. He had kept it going somehow, in the two or three rooms that were left standing. But it had long been clear that the school was only a diversion which took away time from politics, from his children, from money, from the village.

But the day he finally decided — when the child was less than a year old and still sickly — it was only after an immense effort. After all, he had devoted a large part of his life to the school; it was a testament to a youth he was still loath to part with. There was some vanity in it, too: he liked to walk down those corridors looking at pictures of himself and he liked to hear visitors’ compliments.

The tears which rolled down his cheeks on the day he invited the villagers into the school to hear his last speech as headmaster were therefore very real and painful tears. When his twenty young men led in the villagers, the tears were pouring down in a stream. Through his own he saw answering tears in the crowd. Don’t worry, he wept, waving a consoling hand at the garlanded pictures of himself which had been arrayed behind him on the podium. These aren’t going away. They’re going to be closer to you than ever. They’ll be right among you, everywhere, in the banyan tree, in your houses, in your shops. You’ll never be far from me.

The tears flowed faster as he read accusations into the crowd’s silent, fixed gaze. I couldn’t help it, he cried. It had to come to an end. It was a good school in its time, but that time is past. A new time beckons. The time to teach is over. The time has come to serve the people.

The time has come, he said, his tears drying on his cheeks, for straight lines. The trouble with this village is that there aren’t enough straight lines. Look at Europe, look at America, look at Tokyo: straight lines, that’s the secret. Everything is in straight lines. The roads are straight, the houses are straight, the cars are straight (except for the wheels). They even walk straight. That’s what we need: straight lines. There’s a time and an age for everything, and this is the age of the straight line.

He stopped and his eyes scanned the crowd. Unerringly, with an inevitable certainty, they found Balaram, his alter ego, his doppelgänger, the twin who had journeyed with him so long through the same school, and there was not a soul in that schoolyard who would not have sworn that he was asking Balaram for his approval.

But Balaram was looking away, his face strained with concentration, his head cocked, for all the world as though he were listening to a voice. But that voice was not Bhudeb Roy’s.

Do you think that was when he thought of it? Alu asked Gopal one day when he was in hiding in Calcutta after it was all over.

Yes, said Gopal sadly, he told me so. In a way it was only natural — he had to think of something. After all, the closing of the school meant the end of his livelihood. But Balaram being what he was, of course, that was the last thing on his mind. By that time he was certain that Bhudeb Roy was lying about his reasons for closing the school down. He was quite convinced that it was really the carbolic or antiseptic or whatever it was. He told me so. He said: Bhudeb Roy lives in mortal fear; there is nothing in the world that he fears as much as carbolic acid. His whole life is haunted by his fear of antiseptic. He’d do anything, go to any lengths to destroy my carbolic acid. He fears it as he fears everything that is true and clean and a child of Reason. He’s closing the school down because he thinks it’ll put an end to my work with disinfectants.

Of course, it all seemed very strange to me, so I said: But, Balaram, be reasonable. Surely he could find other ways of putting an end to your work with carbolic acid? Maybe he really is busy and wants more time for his work or politics or something like that …

Balaram was very angry. He said: Don’t be a fool, Gopal. I know that man. I’ve grown old with him. I’ve watched Ideality and Wonder and Hope disappear into depressions in his skull, and I’ve watched his squamous suture bloat like a dead dog in a ditch. There’s nothing I don’t know about that man. I know him better than I know myself. And I know this: he lives in terror of carbolic acid, and he’ll do anything he can to destroy my supplies. But I’ve learnt my lessons, too, and he won’t find it easy. I’ll fight him to the end. I know how. I knew it when he started talking about straight lines.

So that was when the idea came to him. That was when the battle lines were finally drawn.

(Gopal had always had the romantic spectator’s tendency to dramatize.)

That was when the Pasteur School of Reason was conceived in Balaram’s mind.

Chapter Five. The School of Reason

People were always surprised to discover that Balaram had a genuine flair for organization.

The Rationalists, for instance, even Dantu, were no less than amazed at the energy, determination and capacity for attention to detail he showed once he set to work in earnest after being elected president. Many of them were frankly admiring. That alone was a considerable achievement, for it was quite a different matter when Balaram first put his idea to them soon after his election. They were quite horrified then.

After the first shocked silence someone had managed to croak hoarsely: A campaign against dirty underwear? Balaram nodded cheerfully while dubious glances perforated the silence. The gloom deepened, for no one knew what to say. It had come as a shock: dirty underwear was tough meat after a diet of salutations to the Cosmic Boson and exposés of mythologized fireworks.

But, Balaram, do we know, is there any concrete evidence to suggest, that Pasteur felt as strongly about dirty underwear as you seem to think?

Balaram had an answer ready: No, there’s no direct evidence, really; but, as you know, biographers often skip over great men’s opinions on these somewhat … unconventional … subjects. But I don’t think there can be much doubt that he felt strongly on the subject. We know, for example, that whenever Pasteur sat down to eat he would first pick up his plate and his glasses and examine them minutely, and then he’d carefully wipe them clean of germs with his handkerchief. He’d do that wherever he happened to be, no matter whether his host was a king or a dish-washer. Petty social conventions never worried Pasteur. If he felt so strongly about crockery, we don’t have to think very hard to imagine his views on underwear.

But most of the members of the society were far from convinced. There was a plaintive cry from the back of the room: Why does it have to be a campaign against underwear? Can’t we think of something else? Couldn’t we start a campaign to teach people the principles of hygiene or something like that instead?

To everyone’s surprise that aroused the usually mild-mannered Balaram actually to pound his fist on his palm. Don’t you see? he cried in appeal. That’s the whole point. The Principles of Hygiene are exactly the same thing as the Cosmic Boson or the last pterodactyl. They’re all like interesting books which you can thumb through and put back on your shelf without once feeling a need to change yourself or your own life in any way at all. That is precisely what we don’t want: we’ve had enough of that kind of thing. We want something immediate, something none of us can turn our backs on; something which holds a new picture of ourselves in front of our eyes and says: Look! This is what you must become! Maybe we can’t do very much, but at least we can make a beginning. All we want to do is make people think. And what better place to begin with than the body and its clothing? No one can turn his back on his body and his own clothes. If only we can sow the germ of a question in their minds, their own clothes and limbs will do the rest for us. They’ll become daily reminders, daily pinpricks, to shake them out of their smugness.

But, Balaram — a shame-faced cough from a new member — think of the embarrassment. How can we talk of underwear in public? What will people say?

Balaram smiled at him gently. Our embarrassment will be the first sign of our victory. If we’re embarrassed, it will be because the matter is so close to us; because talking of our underwear in public means thinking about ourselves in a new and different way. None of us was embarrassed to talk about the Cosmic Boson precisely because it meant so little to us. This is different, and for that very reason we must expect, indeed hope, to be embarrassed.

And just then, when the issue was as good as decided, Dantu rose to his feet. Balaram, he said, everyone here knows that we are friends. They know that I’ve never had any doubt that you are the best person to be president of this society. But today — and I wish it were not so — today I have to say that on this business I think you’re absolutely, totally wrong.

Balaram glanced quickly around the room. He could see from the watchful faces around him that everything hung in the balance now; that his answer would decide the future of his enterprise. He clasped his hands before him and leant back: Why?

Because I can’t help remembering what you said to Gopal once in this very room. You said: What good will it do anyone if the people of Hindusthan begin to chant He Boson instead of He Ram? I think you have to answer the same question today. What good will it do anyone if the students of this college begin to wash their underwear not only every day, but also every hour? Will it make any difference to anyone? Dirt doesn’t lie in underwear. It is the world, the world of people, which makes dirt possible. How can you hope to change people’s bodies without changing the world?

A painfully slow moment dragged by. Then, very gravely, Balaram said: Why do we always think of changing the world and never of changing people? Surely, surely, if we succeed in making even one person, just one, ask of himself how can I be a better, cleaner human being, we will have changed the world; changed it in the best of possible ways.

Dantu hesitated, torn between loyalty to Balaram and his own beliefs. He could sense that Balaram had carried the others with him.

It’s a mistake, Balaram, he said quickly, a terrible mistake — you’ll see. And then he dropped on to the mat and huddled back against the wall.

There were no more objections. A small but enthusiastic group volunteered to help Balaram organize the campaign. Dantu said nothing more about the matter. Once, days later, when Balaram tried to talk to him about it, he murmured sadly: It won’t work, Balaram, you’ll see. I only hope nothing terrible happens. And he went racing off to a lecture and left Balaram standing in the middle of the corridor.

There were a few other sceptics among the Rationalists who whispered behind their hands that this was just another of Balaram’s fancy ideas. He wouldn’t be able to do anything about it — how could anyone organize a campaign for clean underwear? It was just a lot of talk; he wouldn’t even be able to begin when it came to it.

Balaram proved them wrong.

He began by racking his brains for a catchy name for the campaign. A few days’ thought produced: The Campaign for Clean Clouts. The majority of the Rationalists were enthusiastic. Some went so far as to call it a masterpiece of alliteration. But one of the English literature people objected: It’s an archaism; no one will know what it means. Balaram swept him aside: All the better; it’ll make them curious.

He decided to launch the campaign with a public meeting. The venue was a problem at first. A few of the Rationalists argued that it ought to be held in a lecture room. Balaram considered the proposal quite seriously but eventually decided against it. Lecture rooms, he said, are no better than bookshelves; as soon as you enter one you know that everything inside is dead. Instead he decided to hold the meeting at the top of the great flight of stairs which lead up from the portico in the main building of Presidency College to the wide veranda of the first floor. No one can ignore it there, he said. They’ll come in their hundreds, you’ll see.

After that Balaram wrote out notices announcing the meeting. He kept the notices deliberately vague. They said only: Meeting to launch the Campaign for Clean Clouts — come, see, listen and begin a new life. Underneath he wrote the date and the time in small but distinct letters.

Over the next two weeks Balaram leaked the notices out a few at a time. He stuck a few up on pillars and in other prominent places, but always took them down a few hours later. Occasionally he slipped one or two into a few chosen rooms in the Eden Hindu Hostel. People will be more intrigued, he explained, if there aren’t too many of them.

It worked. Days before the meeting there was a buzz of curiosity in the college and in the hostel. The Rationalists were under strict instructions to say nothing; but a few, as Balaram had calculated, could not help dropping scattered hints. That only served to whet the general curiosity.

When the day came, even the most sceptical of the Rationalists admitted that they had been wrong. The meeting was a triumph for Balaram even before it began. There were no less than a hundred and fifty students crowded on to those stairs. Middle Parting and his friends were conspicuous in the centre of the crowd. They were as boisterous as ever, but they were also curious. When Balaram, shivering with nervousness but immensely elated, climbed on to a chair to begin the meeting, the crowd was still growing. It was the best possible tribute to his talent for organization.

So Balaram was perhaps the only person in Lalpukur who was not surprised by the success of the Pasteur School of Reason. He had a shrewd appreciation of his own abilities.

Once the idea of the Pasteur School of Reason had been conceived in his mind, Balaram had no doubt that he would be able to organize the school successfully. But he was also astute enough to know that he would have to work hard to make other people share his optimism. He had learnt that lesson from his experience with the Rationalists.

He was not wrong. Shombhu Debnath burst into frank laughter when Balaram first put the idea to him. You’re wrong, Balaram-babu, he said hoarsely, you couldn’t be more wrong. I’m no teacher. I certainly wouldn’t be able to teach in a school.

Balaram was determined to be patient. Shombhu Debnath was essential to his plans. He thought for a moment, looking around him at Shombhu Debnath’s bare courtyard, dappled by the failing evening light. He gripped the edge of the rickety chair that had been carried out for him and leant forward, towards Shombhu Debnath, who was squatting on the earth. You’re a very good teacher, he said and he pointed at Alu, who was working in the loom-shed. Look how well you’ve taught Alu. It’s your duty to teach others as well. There are so many people in the village today who have nothing to do, no way of earning a living. You could teach them a way, and you must. It’s your duty, not just to them, but to yourself. Teaching is your destined vocation — it’s written all over your skull. You cannot squander your gifts. You could teach them your craft and together we could teach them more than a craft. We could show them the beginning of a new history.

Shombhu Debnath snorted. You can keep your history, he said, picking at his blackened teeth with a blade of grass. I don’t want anything to do with it. Whenever people like you start talking about history you can be sure it means nothing but trouble for people like me.

He rose to his feet and looked away. No, Balaram-babu, he said, you’re wasting your time. There’s no point in going on with this.

Suddenly he paused and his red eyes narrowed. Does this business have anything to do with Bhudeb Roy? he said sharply.

Certainly not, said Balaram.

But this … school will be right next to Bhudeb Roy’s house? I mean, it will be in your house? Will it?

Balaram nodded eagerly. Shombhu Debnath smiled. His red eyes gleamed at Balaram. All right, he said. Maybe I’ll teach in your school. It won’t do me any harm. Why not?

Balaram jumped to his feet in elation. He had expected days of argument before Shombhu Debnath agreed; it was nothing less than a windfall. He slapped Shombhu Debnath on his bare back. You’re doing the right thing, Shombhu-babu, he said, choking with joy. Our school couldn’t have a better beginning.

Shombhu Debnath had been the really important uncertainty in Balaram’s mind. The rest of his plans were clear. The School of Reason was to be open to everyone in Lalpukur — to men and women, boys and girls, people of any age at all, but the illiterate were to be given preference. The School would have two main departments. After much careful thought Balaram had decided to name one the Department of Pure Reason and the other the Department of Practical Reason: abstract reason and concrete reason, a meeting of the two great forms of human thought. Every student would have to attend classes in both departments. In the Department of Pure Reason they would be taught elementary reading, writing and arithmetic, and they would be given lectures in the history of science and technology. Balaram was to be the head and probably the only teacher in that department. In the Department of Practical Reason, the students would be taught weaving or tailoring (but that again was uncertain, for it depended on Toru-debi’s assent). Alu and Maya were to teach Elementary Weaving — the techniques of starching, winding, warping and basic coarse weaving — while Shombhu Debnath would teach Advanced Weaving. Shombhu Debnath would be the head of the Department of Practical Reason, but Toru-debi, if she agreed, would head her own section. Balaram would be headmaster of the school or, as he preferred to put it, the Fount of Reason.

Every student would have to enrol for two years. It would be assumed that the students would carry on working on the land, or doing whatever they usually did for a living, while they were studying at the school, so the classes would be held in the late afternoon and early evening. Night classes were a possibility to be thought of later.

But a question nagged Balaram: ought the school to charge a fee? He disliked the idea. Fees will never cover our costs, he said, and they might keep some people away.

Shombhu Debnath scratched his head. It’s not the money that’s important, he said. It’s something else. If you don’t charge fees, no one will come, you’ll see, and people will laugh. People never take anything seriously unless they have to pay for it. It’s like those missionaries’ Bibles, given away by the truckload and only good for firewood.

So they decided to charge a fee of four rupees a month; not enough to deter anyone, nor too little to be considered a serious investment.

But mainly the school would finance itself by selling the cloth produced by students during class and by taking orders for tailoring. And here there was a job for Rakhal, too. If he agreed, he could be the school’s Sales Manager, in charge of the business of selling the school’s cloth in Naboganj. Balaram was a little worried about a possible charge of nepotism for hiring every member of Shombhu Debnath’s family; but, on the other hand, as he explained conscientiously, Rakhal was perfectly suited to the job — there were few people in Lalpukur who had his expert knowledge of Naboganj and its markets, and he had already proved his worth in marketing Alu’s cloth.

The money earned by selling cloth and by tailoring would be used to buy yarn and dyes and possibly more looms (more work for Rakhal), and for the teachers’ salaries. Balaram was adamant that everyone who taught or worked in the school would be paid a proper wage. This is not charity after all, he said. We want everyone to work hard, and no one works too hard for a charity.

If there was any money left over after paying salaries and buying fresh yarn and so on, it could be distributed equally among the students. But Balaram was willing to recognize, realistically, that that was an unlikely prospect for some time.

As for the site, that was a problem already solved. There was plenty of space outside Balaram’s house for a bamboo-and-thatch shed to house the weaving section. A couple of looms could easily be installed there. Toru-debi, if she agreed to teach, would probably prefer to take her classes in a room inside the house. And there were plenty of other rooms, and the courtyard besides, for Balaram to teach in.

They would need some money to start with, of course, but Balaram had solved that problem, too. He had a little money put away in the bank, enough to get the school going. It would be only a loan, of course, and the school could pay him back once it was on its feet.

So it’s all very simple, you see, Balaram said, looking straight into Shombhu Debnath’s eyes. Simple and beautiful: knowledge coupled with labour — and that, too, labour of a kind which represents the highest achievement of practical reason. Our school will be the perfect embodiment, the essence of Reason. And so, naturally, it can only be named after the greatest of all the soldiers of Reason — Louis Pasteur.

Shombhu Debnath smiled and looked away. But that’s not all, he said, is it? There’s something else on your mind, too, isn’t there, something you haven’t told me? I haven’t heard you say anything about that carbolic stuff you’re so fond of. Where does that fit in?

Balaram started guiltily. This is enough, he said, for the moment. One has to think of a beginning before one can think of an end.

With his first major hurdle crossed Balaram went ahead with redoubled energy. He had always been fairly sure that he could count on Alu and Maya, and he was proved right. They agreed willingly. Even Rakhal jumped at his offer. Balaram did not know it, but Rakhal was passing through a period of bewilderment and anxiety then. His income from his bombs had dried up because the market for home-made bombs in Naboganj had suddenly and unexpectedly collapsed. Some of his regular customers turned him away saying that there had been a shift in the political climate. His friends whispered that the big producers had stepped in to drive the small fry out, and there was a rumour that the stockpiles from the war had suddenly been released on the market. Rakhal neither knew nor cared. His newly acquired skill had given him endless pleasure, and suddenly it was useless. And, as though that were not enough, the kung fu class, so long the centre of his life, had shut its doors on him. He had twice absent-mindedly beaten the teacher (who had advertised a few more skills than he actually possessed) into a dead faint. Nobody else would fight him. He was too forgetful, they said; he could never remember that it was just practice. The only consolation left to Rakhal was an occasional kung fu film at a morning show in Naboganj, and even those he would not have been able to afford if it were not for his percentage of the money he made from selling Alu’s cloth (which was not so much after all). Balaram’s offer came when Rakhal was steadying himself to face a choice between giving up cigarettes or films — or, worse, asking Alu for a loan. When Balaram told him about the job, he could hardly believe his luck.

Balaram was still left with the problem of persuading Toru-debi to teach in the school. Twice he began to explain to her, but both times his courage failed him and he ended in stammering confusion. To his enormous surprise, when he did finally ask her, she was not merely willing, but enthusiastic. No sooner had she heard him out than she bustled off to her room to find her old cut-out models and plan her first lessons.

The school could not have had a better beginning. After that it was just a question of building a shed outside Balaram’s front door and installing Shombhu Debnath’s looms there, and of buying a few slates and some lead, possibly a few blackboards as well, and stocking up on a fair quantity of yarn.

Balaram delegated the building of the shed to Shombhu Debnath, Rakhal and Alu. Of course, said Shombhu Debnath. I’ll take charge. But once they started work he spent most of his time squatting on his heels and throwing sidelong glances down the red-dust path which ran past Balaram’s house while Rakhal and Alu planned and built the shed. It was a very simple structure — long and rectangular with chhanch walls, flimsy squares of plaited bamboo shavings, held up by bamboo posts driven into the earth at two-foot intervals. They cut the posts from the thickets behind Balaram’s house. Only the plaited shavings and thatch for the roof had to be bought, and that was a matter of a couple of hundred rupees.

Balaram tried to help Rakhal and Alu build the shed, but they would not let him, for it was almost certain that he would hurt himself. So Balaram had to content himself with sitting on the steps outside his front door and watching them.

Rakhal and Alu worked fast, and the shed shot out of the ground. They were interrupted only once. Bhudeb Roy had been watching the shed go up from his veranda. He was intrigued as well as suspicious. One day, a few days before sending off his monthly report to the police station, he decided to make inquiries. He walked down the red-dust path to Balaram’s house, with a few of his sons behind him.

Shombhu Debnath saw him coming down the path and scrambled into the branches of a tree. Bhudeb-babu, he called down, how’s it going? Getting it up still or are you going to bring some more planes down on us? Any more on the way?

Bhudeb Roy ignored him, but his sons threw a few pebbles into the tree. Shombhu Debnath cackled with laughter.

Balaram was sitting on the steps outside his front door. Seeing Bhudeb Roy turn into the path which led to the house, he was suddenly very flustered. He rose quickly to his feet and looked around him. Then he hurried across to a drum of carbolic acid which had been left outside the house, against a wall. Planting himself in front of it, he spread his hands protectively across.

Bhudeb Roy saw him, smiled politely, and made his way towards him, skirting round the shed. Don’t come any closer, Balaram rapped out when he was a few feet away.

Bhudeb Roy stopped and looked at him in surprise. What’s the matter, Balaram-babu? he said. I only wanted to ask you whether you’re buying cattle. This shed …?

Balaram glared at him: No. It’s for a school.

Bhudeb Roy’s cordiality drained away. His tiny eyes hardened. Have you bought this land? he said.

Balaram, watching him closely, his face drawn with tension, said: No.

Bhudeb Roy rubbed his huge jaw and bared his teeth in a smile. Then, I have to tell you, he said, that you can’t build here. You’re encroaching on government property.

Balaram stood erect and swept a mass of silver hair from his forehead. Bhudeb-babu, he said, Pasteur didn’t allow misguided and superstitious people to stop him from building his laboratory at Villeneuve l’Etang. Nor shall we. If the government wants its land, let it file a case in the district court. That’s all I have to say to you.

We’ll see, Bhudeb Roy said through his teeth. We’ll see. He turned and walked back towards his house. Be careful, Shombhu Debnath called after him, from his perch. A man could hurt himself at your age.

Balaram, shaken, went into the house. He came out with an old tattered blanket and threw it over the drum of carbolic acid.

Next evening Alu wandered into Balaram’s study. Balaram was making notes by the harsh light of a naked electric bulb. He was pleased to see Alu, for it was a long time since he had stepped into the study. He smiled and, prompted by years of half-forgotten habit, patted the arm of his easy chair. Come here, he said. Come and sit. Then it occurred to him that Alu had long since grown too heavy for the arm of the easy chair, and he hastily changed his gesture and waved at a chair. Sit down, he said, get that chair.

Alu did not seem to hear him. He stood over the easy chair, looking at the floor and shifting his feet. What’s the matter? Balaram asked, surprised. Are you looking for a book?

No, said Alu, and scratched his head.

Then? Science Today?

I want …, Alu blurted out, I want to get married.

Oh! said Balaram. He ran his hand through his hair: That’s a big business. We must set about it scientifically. We have to think about the right personality types and things like that. We can’t set about it in a hurry …

Balaram stopped; he had a sudden glimpse of regions of immense effort and risk. Nervously he said: It takes a lot of work. You’d better talk to your aunt. Maybe she knows a girl. Perhaps she could advertise in the newspapers. I don’t think I’ll be able to help.

No, no, Alu broke in, I already have a wife. He stopped, flustered: What I mean is I already know someone. A girl. That’s what I mean.

You mean …? Balaram looked at him in disbelief. You mean … love? A love-marriage?

Alu was almost tearful with embarrassment. Yes, he said, his voice a strangled bleat. I want to marry Maya. Maya Debnath.

Balaram rose from his chair and threw his arms around Alu. Hugging him to his chest, he ran a hand over his knobbly head. I’m very glad, Alu, he said, his voice choked. Very glad, and very happy. She’s a good girl. You have … you have the blessings of the Cosmic Boson, as Gopal would say.

He stopped and dropped his arms. But I don’t know, he said pensively, what Toru will say. Because, you know, Maya works here, and women have their own ideas about these things. But that doesn’t matter. Mere prejudice. We can persuade her …

Then a thought struck Balaram and he cut himself short. Frowning, he began to pace the floor. Alu watched him in silence. After a minute or two Balaram stopped opposite Alu and said: Maybe you should wait a bit, Alu. You know what weddings are. People everywhere. There’ll be dozens of people running in and out of the house and we can’t keep an eye on everyone. It’s not safe. Anything could happen to the carbolic.

He leant towards Alu and whispered: Did you see Bhudeb Roy yesterday? Did you see how he looked at the carbolic? He’s planning something; I know him. He’s thinking of ways to get at it. We have to be careful. Very careful. We have to watch him. There’s nothing he won’t do to get his hands on that carbolic.

But he wasn’t looking at the carbolic acid, Alu said in surprise. He went across to talk to you.

Balaram silenced him with a gesture. You don’t know, he whispered angrily. You’re too young. That’s how he always goes about things. The carbolic is what he really wanted. He fears it like a fox fears light. He fears it because it’s clean. He’d do anything … No, it wouldn’t be safe to hold a wedding in the house now. He could easily slip his men into the house. No, Alu, you’ll have to wait a bit. Wait till the school is properly on its feet, then we’ll give you a wedding to remember.

But …, Alu began.

No, said Balaram. He squeezed Alu’s shoulder. Listen to me — just this once.

All right, Alu said reluctantly.

Balaram led him to the door of his study. He patted him on the back and said: Just a few months. That’s all. Right now we have the school to think about.

A week later the shed was ready, and in another two weeks the looms had been installed, the slates and the yarn bought and an order placed with a carpenter for two blackboards. A board painted by Balaram and Alu appeared on top of the shed declaring the Pasteur School of Reason open for admissions.

The news spread, and over the next few days most people in Lalpukur found one excuse or another to wander down the red-dust path and steal a suspicious look at the new school. But nobody stepped in. There was not so much as one admission. The shed didn’t look like a school. It was not even remotely like the familiar tiled, yellow, corridored buildings that people associated with schools. Nor did it look at all like the tin-roofed garages of the commercial and secretarial colleges in Naboganj. It was something else altogether; possibly malign, possibly not. People were curious, but no one was willing to be the first to find out.

It was Rakhal who stepped in at that critical point in the school’s history when it was teetering on the knife’s edge of oblivion. Rakhal had temporarily lost interest in the school after helping to build the shed. Then one day he noticed Alu and Maya sitting dejected by the empty loom-pits in their courtyard, steaming gloom.

He laughed when he heard of the school’s straits. Why didn’t you tell me? he said. A simple thing like that and there you are sitting all long-faced and weepy. You wait, there’ll be a crowd outside the school tomorrow.

There was; not precisely a crowd perhaps, but quite as good as far as Balaram was concerned. Rakhal had gone off to the banyan tree and found a few of his old cronies. He had slapped a few backs and twisted a few arms. Bolai-da, who was well disposed towards the school, had added a few encouraging words, and it was done. Next morning six young men stepped nervously into the school.

The Pasteur School of Reason was in business at last.

Once a lead had been given the more timid picked up courage. In a few weeks the school had twenty-two students. There were, after all, as Balaram knew, so many people in Lalpukur who had nothing to do; people who spent the long days dreaming of learning a trade. In a few months the school had forty-eight students, many more than it could take comfortably, and Balaram had to close the rolls and turn away new applicants. The School of Reason was full: it had ten-year-old boys, married men with families who did odd jobs during the day, young men saving to marry, wizened old men too bent to work in the fields. There were women, too, young and old. Women had overcome their initial suspicion of the school after they had been given the lead by a determined and desperate young widow of twenty-five who had three children and no means of support apart from a cousin’s capricious generosity. Balaram did his best to encourage them to join, and when he closed his rolls the school had eighteen women. All but two of them had opted to join Toru-debi’s tailoring section.

Soon the school was producing more cloth than Rakhal could handle alone, and he had to hire the occasional helper (who went down in Balaram’s register as Assistant Sales Managers). The Tailoring Section did even better than Weaving; they were taking in orders from all the villages around Lalpukur, for their work had somehow, by word of mouth, acquired a reputation for durability. At the end of six months the school had earned a substantial sum of money. Balaram was frankly envious when he added up the total. I wish, he said wistfully to Alu and Shombhu Debnath, I wish Pure Reason had a product — something one could sell to gauge its worth.

But he was also delighted. After paying off arrears of salaries, buying new stocks of yarn and so on, there was still a fair amount of money left. Part of it was spent on acquiring a new loom and a secondhand sewing machine for the school. The rest was used to start a fund which would help the students acquire their own sewing machines and looms after they graduated. Balaram gave the students a little lecture when he started the fund. You won’t be in the school for ever, he said, and you must think of the future. You may think you would rather have the money in your pockets now, but you would only regret it later. Someday you’ll have to start working on your own and, if you don’t have any machines then, your skills will be wasted. It’s then that you will thank me for starting this fund.

The students clapped. Balaram looked around his courtyard, crowded with smiling students, and he was filled with pride. Afterwards, earthen cups of tea were handed out to everyone (Nonder-ma had been busy making tea for hours, in preparation). The courtyard was full of laughter and cheerful optimism.

The school is a success, Balaram said to Shombhu Debnath, waving a hand at the courtyard. It’s a greater success than anything we could have imagined.

Shombhu Debnath grunted. He had wrapped a white cotton shawl over his bare shoulders for the occasion, but he had not changed out of his usual red gamcha. He looked slyly at Balaram. But that’s not all, Balaram-babu, he said, is it? A success of this kind wouldn’t be enough for you. You have something else in mind, don’t you?

Abruptly Balaram turned and walked away. Shombhu Debnath’s voice followed him: What is it, Balaram-babu? When are you going to tell us?

He was not to know till a few more months had passed.

The school was nearing the end of its first year then. Some of the more promising students in the Weaving Section had graduated beyond coarse weaving, and had started producing fairly intricately worked saris. The Tailoring Section had more orders than it could handle and the list never seemed to stop growing. All but two of the students passed the small examination Balaram set them. When Balaram did his accounts, after Rakhal had handed him the money the traders had paid him in Naboganj for that month’s consignment of cloth, it was apparent that the school had made a handsome sum of money.

Balaram called another meeting. Classes were cancelled that evening, and everyone in the school crowded into the courtyard, cheerfully expecting a repeat of the earlier meeting. To begin with, it was. Balaram read out the accounts and explained how much money had been spent on salaries and how much exactly had been put away in the students’ fund. But when he read out the total figures at the end of it there were still three thousand rupees left unaccounted for.

There was a curious hush. Balaram was suddenly solemn. Today, he said, I have to say something very difficult; I have to tell you about a dream. The school as you see it today has only two departments. But when I first dreamt of it, when the idea was first born in my mind, there was a third department as well. The time has come to tell you about that third department, because at last we have enough money to realize that dream. Let me put it like this: Practical Reason and Pure Reason are fine and wonderful things, and what we have already achieved in this school, even though I should not be the one to say it, is in its own way fine and wonderful. Practical and Pure Reason are like two halves of a wheel: without one, the other is incomplete and useless. But a wheel, by itself, is useless, too — it cannot roll forward on its own. Left to itself, it only falls on its side. In the same way, our school, too, is in danger now of falling on its side, into a bed of smugness and complacency, like a wheel which has nothing behind it. It is doing well, true; but a school is not a shop or a factory. A school, like Reason itself, must have a purpose. Without a purpose Reason decays into a mere trick, forever reflecting itself like mirrors at a fair. It is that sense of purpose which the third department will restore to our school. It will help us to remember that we cannot limit the benefits of our education and learning to ourselves — that it is our duty to use it for the benefit of everybody around us. That is why I have decided to name the new department the Department of the March of Reason. It will remind us that our school has another aspect: Reason Militant.

Most of the students had drifted into apathetic boredom during Balaram’s speech. A hum of subdued talk ebbed around the courtyard. Balaram raised his voice. The first task before the Department of the March of Reason, he explained, was to disinfect the village — disinfect it so thoroughly that no trace of a corrupting germ would surface in it again. And to that end the remaining three thousand rupees would be spent on purchasing carbolic acid.

There were a few murmurs of protest: most of the students would much rather have had the money they had helped to earn for themselves. But there were others who were curious, and some of the younger students remembered seeing Balaram busy with buckets of carbolic acid during the war and after; it had looked like fun — licence to douse one’s neighbours’ houses with pungent liquid. So Balaram had no shortage of volunteers; fourteen students offered to go with him to Naboganj to help bring back the carbolic acid.

Next morning Balaram gathered his volunteers together early and rushed off to Naboganj without eating his breakfast. Toru-debi protested: What’s the hurry? Your what’s-its-name, marching reason, won’t miss the bus if you go an hour late.

There is a hurry, Balaram said shortly, and almost ran from the house. He came back in the afternoon, with his volunteers, in a hired truck piled high with sacks of carbolic powder and a small arsenal of squirt-guns, water-pistols and plastic buckets. He set the volunteers to work at once. They rolled a few clean oil-drums into the patch of garden in front of the house next to the shed which housed the Weaving Section. Balaram directed them while they mixed the carbolic powder into a dilute solution. When they had finished, he gave them precise instructions. They were to assemble in the school at four o’clock the next day. That was usually the time he took his classes in reading and writing, but they were to be excused class for once.

Balaram was up early the next day, bright-eyed and feverish with excitement. He spent the day pacing his study in nervous agitation, jerking his thick lock of white hair from his eyes, his fine, slim face drawn with tension. Long before four he was out of the house, peering down the path, waiting impatiently for the volunteers. Alu, who had decided to go with him, went out to join him a little later. At four-thirty only six of the fourteen volunteers had arrived. Balaram was furious. Where are they? he shouted at one of the students, a fifteen-year-old boy with no front teeth.

The boy was taken aback, for Balaram had never shouted at anyone in the school before. Maybe they’re at the banyan tree, he said apologetically, sucking his canines. Don’t you know, Balaram-babu, Bhudeb-Roy-shaheb is holding a meeting, a proper microphone-and-loudspeaker meeting, under the banyan tree today? He’s going to lay the first stone for a road, an absolutely straight so-big-and-black macadam road from the banyan tree to his house. His men are going all over the village taking people to the meeting. We had to hide and come round through the ricefields.

Was it coincidence? Was it part of Balaram’s plans? Had he known?

He must have, Alu said to Gopal in Calcutta several months later. He must have wanted it to happen, otherwise why was he in so much of a hurry?

At the time, Balaram gave nothing away. With quiet determination he said: This is only one of the obstacles which will litter the path of Reason. Then he handed out water-pistols, squirt-guns, mugs and buckets of carbolic solution and led them down the path.

Where are we going, sir? one of the students asked.

To the banyan tree, said Balaram. There’s no part of the village more littered with filth.

But when they were only a few hundred yards away from the banyan tree and could hear the hum of the crowd and Bhudeb Roy’s voice booming through loudspeakers — This road will be an example; an example in straightness and hard work, which are the needs of the hour — Balaram faltered. Alu saw him hesitate and tugged at his elbow. Let’s go back, he said. There’s still time. There’s no need for this.

Balaram stopped and put his bucket down. The volunteers stopped behind him. Balaram’s face was drenched in sweat. Alu saw his courage draining away with the blood in his face. Come on, Alu said. Let’s turn back …

But before he could finish Shombhu Debnath was at Balaram’s elbow. Alu stopped in surprise; Shombhu Debnath had not been with them when they left the school.

Turning back already, Balaram-babu? Shombhu Debnath sang out. He laughed and his red eyes shone into Balaram’s: You mean to say the march of reason is being turned back by a single germ? Come on.

With a wink at Balaram, Shombhu Debnath unrolled his ashen hair and knotted it tightly into place. He unwound his strip of red cotton, and tied it on again, like a loincloth. Then he turned to one of the volunteers, snatched a bucket and a squirt-gun out of his hands and led the way to the banyan tree. Shamefacedly Balaram followed, with Alu behind him. But the volunteers lagged behind.

The crowd under the banyan tree was large by Lalpukur’s standards, but not huge. There were perhaps eighty people crowded into the open space around the tree. Some were squatting on the ground and picking their teeth; some stood leaning on each other and against the tree’s massive, twisted aerial roots. Bhudeb Roy’s sons and the twenty young men stood around the crowd, blocking all the paths out of the clearing. A small wooden platform had been erected near the banyan’s huge trunk, between Bolai-da’s shop and the tea-shop. A portrait of Bhudeb Roy, inexpertly painted on a sheet of cardboard almost as large as Bhudeb Roy himself, was suspended from the tree, directly above the platform. The painter had obviously tried to reach a compromise between Bhudeb Roy and a famous filmi face. As a result Bhudeb Roy’s jaws and tiny eyes, immensely distorted, leered grotesquely at the crowd in an attitude of screen tenderness. Bhudeb Roy, heavily garlanded, stood under the portrait, thundering into a microphone. He was dressed as usual in a spotless white dhoti and kurta, but a white political cap covered his baldness. There were dozens of other pictures of him accompanied by slogans (Straight to Progress) stuck up on the trunk of the ancient banyan and on the shops.

Bhudeb Roy checked for a moment when he saw Balaram entering the clearing with a bucket. Then he recovered and roared into the microphone again, but with a trace of uneasiness in his voice: This is a new beginning, a straight beginning …

Balaram stopped and looked around him in indecision. Now that he was actually there he was not sure what to do. Shombhu Debnath had vanished with his squirt-gun and bucket. Alu was beside him, but there was so sign of the volunteers. Two of Bhudeb Roy’s men turned and saw him. Bhudeb Roy roared from his platform: Nothing shall turn us from our straight advance … The young men advanced towards them stroking their wooden clubs. The loudspeakers screamed: The road will be straight, the straight road of progress, straight to my house … The men were barely an arm’s length away, and Alu thrust himself in front of Balaram. One of the men raised his club.

And then suddenly with a gurgling whoosh a stream of disinfectant poured out of the tree, right over Bhudeb Roy. The microphone drowned in a cacophony of squeaks and screeches. Bhudeb Roy collapsed on to the platform, spluttering and coughing. A jet of carbolic shot out of the boughs of the tree and slammed into the suspended portrait. The cardboard sagged and swung backwards on its rope. For a moment it hung by a thread and then the rope gave, and it plummeted down in a soggy mass. Bhudeb Roy was floundering wetly on the platform, directly in its path. His head took the cardboard, square in the middle. He was flung backwards. When he struggled up again, the cardboard was hanging damply over his garlands and his head was staring out of a ragged hole in the painted jaw.

Bhudeb Roy’s sons and the twenty young men were motionless, their eyes riveted on Bhudeb Roy in dismay, as he struggled blindly, with the portrait hanging around his neck like a soggy octopus. Alu saw his chance and jogged Balaram’s elbow. They picked up their buckets and emptied them on the two men in front of them. They were gone before the men could open their eyes again.

When Bhudeb Roy sat up again his sons and his hired men were all around him, spewing apologies; trying to help him up; fastidiously picking bits of cardboard off his garlanded neck. The clearing was empty. There was no sign of Balaram or Alu. The boughs of the banyan were tranquil and uninhabited. But he could hear laughter rippling through the ricefields.

Bhudeb Roy insisted on being driven straight to hospital.

The next day, while Shombhu Debnath and Maya were at the school and Rakhal was away in Naboganj, their huts caught fire. They burnt down to a heap of smouldering ashes and rubble before Maya and Shombhu even knew of it. Later, sifting through the rubble they found two charred kerosene-tins that were not their own.

They lost everything: the grain they had stored away, hanks of yarn, their pots and pans, Rakhal’s carefully accumulated shirts and trousers. The ear-rings and the two brass pots which were Maya’s only mementoes of her mother had vanished, too.

Balaram took it for granted that Shombhu Debnath, Maya and Rakhal would come to live in his house. Where else could they go? So Alu carried the few odds and ends Maya had recovered from the ashes back to their house. Maya stumbled after him, blinded by her tears.

Later, they went back to fetch Shombhu Debnath and found him squatting beside the rubble staring into the sky. Maya, he said softly, remember — this is what happens when a man ties himself down and builds a house. It burns down. Nobody has to do it: it’s only Sri Krishna reminding you what the world’s like.

He would not leave the rubble, though Maya did her best to persuade him. Maya’s own grief was swept away by another worry: what would Rakhal do when he came back from Naboganj and heard about the fire? She knew he might do anything at all when he heard about the kerosene-tins they had found, and she knew she would be powerless to stop him.

But to her surprise Rakhal did nothing when he was told. He asked Alu innumerable questions about the kerosene-tins, and later he spent a long time scratching about in the ashes, looking for scraps of his clothes. When he found none he went back quietly with Alu and Maya and fell peacefully asleep on a mat in the shed he had helped to build.

Maya trembled with relief. But a few days later Alu saw Rakhal hiding sacks of old soda-bottles, tin cans and rusty nails in the rubble of their huts.

Rakhal was making bombs again.

Chapter Six. Taking Sides

At last we meet Assistant Superintendent of Police Jyoti Das properly. He is a slight man, of medium height, dark, with straight black hair. He has a long, even face with a rounded chin and a short, straight nose. His only irregular features are his eyebrows, which are slightly out of alignment, one being a fraction higher than the other and slightly more sharply curved, and that tends to make him appear a little surprised even when he is not. His eyes, which he has trained over the years to record the minutest details of plumage and colouring, are sharp and meticulously observant. He is clean-shaven and prides himself on it, for it distinguishes him from his colleagues, who tend generally to be aggressively moustached. He is pleasant- if not good-looking, and he looks younger than his twenty-five years. He is often mistaken for a college student.

He is waiting in a small police station a few miles from Lalpukur. The police station is on the main road that runs from Naboganj, past the outer fringes of Lalpukur towards Calcutta. It is a tumbledown old police station, with cracked tiles and gaping holes in the plaster of its yellow walls. Jyoti Das is sitting beside (but not behind) the Head Constable’s desk in a damp gloomy room lined with tattered duty-charts and bunches of keys. The room is acrid with the smell of burnt spices wafting in from the constables’ quarters, and he can hear a drunk or a lunatic talking to himself somewhere in the cells inside.

It is eleven in the morning and Jyoti Das is waiting to meet Bhudeb Roy for the first time. Bhudeb Roy is already half an hour late, though it was he who specified ten-thirty in his telegram to Calcutta, and Jyoti Das is more than a little irritated and impatient. But he is not surprised, for, though he has never met Bhudeb Roy before, in a way he knows him well. After being handed the case he has had to read all the reports Bhudeb Roy has ever filed, and he has not had the impression that Bhudeb Roy is a man who is likely to be unduly flustered about keeping someone waiting. Jyoti Das smiles, remembering the arguments he has often had with his colleagues about their pungent views on filthy little district and mofussil politicians who have suddenly come into so much power that they think nothing of pushing around gazetted officers of the Government of India.

The Head Constable, a big, burly man with an oily face and handlebar moustaches, who has been standing stiffly at the far end of the room looking out of the window, sees Jyoti Das’s impatience and begins to worry. ASP-shaheb, he says, will you have some tea? Jyoti Das smiles and nods.

Assistant Superintendent of Police, the constable calls Jyoti Das. He is not wrong, for that is Jyoti Das’s rank technically. But actually Jyoti Das has a different designation now. About a year ago he was seconded out of the police to an organization which likes to make itself inconspicuous under the name of Union Secretariat (though it has an arsenal of other names stocked away for various contingencies). Like most of his colleagues in the intelligence services Jyoti Das still holds a rank in the police, his parent organization, but officially he is now called a Deputy Central Research Officer. Still, whatever his official designation, one cannot really call someone Deputy Central Research Officer, or even DCRO. On the other hand, ASP is a name, a rank, a class, a standard of living, a life-insurance premium, a metaphysic, while DCRO means nothing, not even what it says.

Besides, few, even in the Union Secretariat, know precisely what their ranks and designations mean in terms of salaries, benefits and seniority. Its sister organizations have their own rankings, blessed by tradition, and only the oldest of the secretarial staff are able to reckon the fine shades of parity between ranks in the different organizations. More than once have the highest levels of the Ministry resounded with the noisy strife of organizations at war with each other over a misunderstanding between officers on ranking or precedence or Additional Dearness Allowance. Inevitably, in their dealings with other organizations and services, the officers of the Union Secretariat tend to fall back on the common factor in their rankings — the police. Correspondence and liaison would be impossible otherwise: officers would end up being dragged before protocol committees for writing semi-official letters to seniors or some such thing.

Four years have passed since Jyoti Das sat for the Civil Service examinations and, somewhat to his surprise, was awarded a good enough result to qualify for the police. He was only twenty-one then; one of the youngest people to qualify. But his father, who had carefully supervised his preparations for the examinations, was not at all pleased. He had intended Jyoti’s first attempt at the examinations to be a kind of trial run, as it were, a preparation for a really serious attempt the year after. It upset all his plans when Jyoti got a place in the police. He had wanted Jyoti to enter one of the coveted, prestigious services, perhaps the Administrative Service like his mother’s uncle, the Secretary, or the Foreign Service, or even at a pinch the Audits and Accounts Service. It appalled him to think of Jyoti spending his life shouting ‘Quick march’ at constables in funny shorts, and dealing with petty criminals and all kinds of other nastiness. And, anyway, he sneered, what are the police going to do with him? Do you think they have time for people who sit around painting birds? You mark my words; he’ll end up being suspended for immoral behaviour and spend the rest of his life hanging around our necks.

He spent months trying to persuade Jyoti to turn down the police and sit for the examinations again. But for once Jyoti was stubborn; the police was a Class I service like any other, he said; and gazetted, too, a secure job with a good pension and gratuity scheme and a house-rent allowance. What more could they want? He had done enough to please them, and if they didn’t like it they would just have to live with it — the examinations had been pure agony and nothing anyone could do would make him sit for them again.

As for his painting, it would be better protected in the police than anywhere else, for it is only when the world you have to make your way in has no real connection with you that your private world is safe.

His father was cold to him for two years afterwards. Jyoti ignored him and tried hard during his training. As a result he did well enough at the Academy to be taken into the Union Secretariat. That was a considerable achievement, for usually getting into the Union Secretariat was a matter of knowing people and talking to uncles. His father thawed, for he soon discovered that, far from shouting ‘Left, right’ at constables, Jyoti’s work consisted in analysing files and writing reports like any other Class I bureaucrat.

Jyoti was relieved because he liked peace at home, and in his own way he was happy in the Union Secretariat. The initial training had been exhausting and the work often seemed pointless, but that was only to be expected. But on the whole it wasn’t too demanding, and at least he didn’t have to wear uniforms. Actually, though he would never have admitted it to his father, he had dreaded the prospect of being posted to a district and having to spend years rushing about catching dacoits and ordering half-trained constables to shoot at mobs. But much more important than any of that was that the Union Secretariat left him time to draw and paint birds. His painting, with his knowledge of ornithology, had improved vastly. A well-known illustrator had been impressed by his watercolour of a green bee-eater — a common bird, but tinted with gradations of colour that were not at all easy to capture in watercolours. There was even some talk of a contract to illustrate a children’s book.

Twelve o’clock and still no sign of Bhudeb Roy. In a way Jyoti Das was not surprised. He had never thought the case would amount to very much. But for some reason his boss, the Deputy Inspector-General (actually, the Additional Director of Research), had decided to take the case very seriously. Handing over the files, he had said: This is going to be an important one. Let’s see how you handle it. I want you to give it all your time; it may make a lot of difference to your career.

Jyoti Das had read through the files conscientiously, but at the end of it he was still unable to understand why the case was so important. To him it seemed a thoroughly trivial affair. There appeared to be no rational grounds to substantiate the principal source’s belief that a retired schoolmaster in his village was being used by a foreign-trained agent of some kind, disguised as a weaver, to run a network of extremists. Of course it was possible — there were so many refugees in those border areas and they were good clay for anyone’s hands. But somehow in this case, Jyoti Das noted on the file, it seemed more likely that some kind of petty village rivalry lay behind the whole thing. At any rate, the local police could easily handle the matter. The Deputy Inspector-General was furious when he saw Jyoti Das’s notations on the file. He had summoned Jyoti Das to his room and said: Mr Das, how long have you been in the Secretariat? A few months, if I’m not mistaken. What the hell, man, you are still not knowing a case from a cauliflower? You think this is a joke? You think you’re already some kind of James Bond and you can question my judgement? When I say this is an important case, you treat it as an important case, and none of your bloody opinions and chit-chat, shit-shat. Jyoti Das had sprung to attention and snapped off a salute. Stop that, the DIG had said. You’re not in the police now. Then he had smiled and given Jyoti a fatherly pat: And never talk of handing the local police a case. The first rule in this bloody garden is that no one hands any cuttings to the police. You’ll soon find out. Those buggers are always trying to hog our work anyway. If we go around handing them cases, we’ll soon have nothing to show for ourselves and no work to do. Now, get out of here and keep me up on how the case develops.

Now it looked as though the case wasn’t going to develop at all: the chief source had disappeared. Tell me, Jyoti Das said to the Head Constable, I suppose you know him — is he always late, or do you think something serious has happened?

The constable shuffled his feet and nervously rubbed the brass buckle on his belt with his thumb. Jyoti Das looked at him and sat up: What’s the matter, Constable?

Sir, he may have been held up, the constable said uneasily. People say he’s been having trouble.

Trouble?

Trouble at home, sir.

Come on, Constable, Jyoti Das said. Wake up. Haven’t you been trained to give reports properly? Now, explain: what trouble?

The constable left the window and shuffled across. He lowered his voice: ASP-shaheb, it’s his wife. She had a child five or six years ago — a girl. The girl’s always been very sickly and recently she fell seriously ill — you know what happens when people have children at such a late age. Bhudeb Roy-babu has taken the girl to all the best doctors, but nobody has been able to do anything. And now, they say, the girl’s illness has driven Parboti-debi, that is, Bhudeb Roy-babu’s wife, a little mad. I heard from a man in the village — he owns a cycle-shop and knows Bhudeb-babu and his family very well — he said that twice, late at night, Bhudeb-babu and his sons have caught Parboti-debi trying to sneak out of the house with the child. Bhudeb-babu was very angry, sir, naturally. He slapped her — in front of all his sons — and asked her: Where are you going to at this time of the night? But she, she didn’t cry at all. She looked straight at him, without lowering her eyes, and said: I’m taking her home; she’s sick because she’s not at home. Right in his face like that. Naturally Bhudeb-babu was even angrier. He shouted at her: What do you mean, ‘her home’? This is her home. But then she shouted back at him and said: No, this is not her home; her home is there — and she waved outside, maybe towards the school. You see, sir, they say that the night the child was, if you’ll excuse me, conceived there was a plane crash in the village — it was during the war, you see — and people say the crash warped her brain a bit. She thinks the plane had something to do with the child, and wants to take her back to the place where it crashed. It’s very sad. She shouts at Bhudeb-babu all the time: Let me go. Let me take the child home. You’ll kill it. It’ll die if it stays here. Poor woman; soon they’ll have to send her to Ranchi or some other asylum. Of course, he can afford it.

Jyoti Das was incredulous. You mean to say — you mean to say he’s kept me waiting for almost two hours because his wife’s going mad?

The constable looked at his feet. Maybe, sir, he said.

At a quarter to one, they heard a car stop outside the police station. Greatly relieved the Head Constable announced: He’s here, sir — and sent two constables running out to escort Bhudeb Roy and three of his sons in. Jyoti Das did not move. He sat as he was, his legs crossed, leaning back in his chair. He decided not to stand up when Bhudeb Roy entered the room.

Bhudeb Roy’s huge bulk entered the room by degrees. His three sons helped him into a chair opposite the Head Constable’s desk. Jyoti Das nodded at him and frowned. He shot his cuffs back and looked pointedly at his watch. Bhudeb Roy ignored him. He snapped his fingers and with a flick of his wrist sent his sons and the constables hurrying out of the room. He was silent for a moment, breathing hard, and looking Jyoti Das over critically. Then he leant across and smiled: I hope you had a nice rest this morning. I hope the constable made you comfortable. He’s not a bad man but a little foolish.

Jyoti Das looked at his tiny, glassy eyes and flat nose; he saw the thin smile splintering the sagging flesh of his face, like a crack cutting through a mound of baking mud, and quickly looked away, out of the open window. He said curtly: Your telegram said your business was very urgent.

Yes, said Bhudeb Roy, it is. I was held up a little at home. My wife and daughter aren’t well. I have to go back home in a few minutes. So I’d better tell you quickly.

Yes?

You have to act fast now, fast. You’ve read all my reports. Now you have to do something. I think the time has come to raid Balaram Bose’s house and to arrest him and his associates.

Jyoti Das sketched a smile: Have there been some new developments, then? Something serious enough to justify that kind of action?

New developments? What do you mean, ‘new developments’? Aren’t the old developments good enough? I wrote to you six months ago about how the extremists attacked me while I was holding a public meeting in the village. They attacked me with all their foreign weapons and everything and tried to kill me, and they disrupted the whole meeting and wrecked the law and order situation in the whole area. I had to go to hospital. You know all that; I wrote to you.

Yes, said Jyoti Das, but I don’t think we can do anything on the basis of that one incident. Has there been anything since then?

Of course there has, or why would I send you a telegram? Do you think they’re going to stop, now that they’ve tasted blood? I’ll tell you what happened. You know I’m building a road for the people of the village? Naturally, the extremists are doing everything they can to hold it up so that I’ll be discredited. Last week, the surveyors and some of my men were plotting the course of the road, and they found that it has to run through an unauthorized construction this man Balaram Bose has erected on government property. I warned him not to do it at the time, but he defied me. Anyway, I sent my men to tell him to have the construction demolished in a week. Do you know what he did? He got one of his hired men — a notorious goonda and Bad Character called Rakhal Debnath (he’s the ringleader’s son; I’ve referred to him in some of my reports) — to chase my men out of his house. Then he came with all his people to my house, and stood outside and shouted: You’ll never destroy my school (he calls it a school). Never. If you want to try, you’ll have to fight me to the end. He’s always been a little crazy, and now he’s gone completely mad, under the influence of that man Shombhu Debnath. So inconsiderate, too — disturbing my wife, who’s not well. I didn’t say anything then, but I sent more men to his house the next day. They found that he’s turned the whole place into a fort. He’s surrounded it with drums of acid and he spends the whole day patrolling the house armed with a squirt-gun. He never goes inside. He even sleeps there at night, in a kind of tent he’s put up outside. He shouted at my men and shot at them with acid. Tell your master he’ll never destroy me or my acid, never. You see what the situation is? He’s gone crazy, he looks it — his hair is like a bird’s nest and his eyes are blood red. I can’t even walk to the village along the path any longer; I have to go through the ricefields. You see what the situation is? You have to act now, before they become too dangerous to handle. Any day now they may escape across the border.

Jyoti Das picked up a pencil and held it poised between his forefingers. Bhudeb-babu, he said, I’m not convinced this matter is serious enough to warrant action on our part.

Not serious enough? After all I’ve told you? They’re a threat to my life. I’m telling you right now, you must raid that house, or you’ll regret it. That’s all I’m asking for — a raid. I’m not even asking you to make any arrests. You can decide on that yourself when you see what’s inside the house. You’ll find bombs and guns and God knows what else. I have definite information that Shombhu Debnath and his son have been getting weapons from across the border. Maybe they’re even making them in there. They completely control Balaram Bose now, and they’re thoroughly dangerous. You must raid that house.

Jyoti Das frowned: To me it seems a matter for the local police.

Bhudeb Roy hammered his fist on the desk. Local police? he said angrily. What use are the local police? The DSP has a heart condition and spends all his time praying in the temples in Naboganj. They’re no use to anyone. And anyway this is your job. This is a border area, which is why the case was given to you people in the first place. Haven’t I told you they’re receiving guns from across the border? You have to do something. What does the government pay you for?

Jyoti Das was flustered but he kept his voice under control. Look, Bhudeb-babu, he said, don’t lose your temper. I’m answerable only to my superiors. I have to discuss the matter with them before any action is possible.

Bhudeb Roy rose from his chair. Glaring into Jyoti Das’s eyes, he said: If you don’t do something soon, I’ll write to your superiors. Maybe you’ll learn then. He turned and stormed out of the room.

Three days later, while Jyoti Das was still working on the report of his meeting with Bhudeb Roy, a clerk brought him a telephone message that had come in from a post office near Lalpukur. Jyoti Das read it and decided that he had no alternative but to take it to the DIG at once. He rang the DIG’s personal secretary and asked for an immediate appointment.

From Bhudeb Roy? the DIG asked, stroking the thin moustache that bisected his large, square face. Jyoti Das nodded. The DIG read the message and looked triumphantly at Jyoti. Wasn’t I telling you? he said. This case is hotting up. You’ll have to leave immediately. Take a few men and ask the DSP in Naboganj to give you a few more. I’ll send him a telex, too. But don’t let him get his toes in. Shut him out.

Yes, sir, said Jyoti.

Then the DIG glanced at the telegram again and looked up, a little puzzled. Tell me, Das, he said. I can understand the first part, this stuff about … bomb attack … bring forces immediately, and all that. But tell me, what do you think the bugger means by ‘wife abducted’?

Chapter Seven. The Ghost in the Machine

At first Maya heard the knocks faintly, through a muffling fog of sleep. She was asleep in a small, dark store-room next to the kitchen, which she had cleared out for herself, on Toru-debi’s instructions, after she and Rakhal had moved into their house. She could hear Nonder-ma in the kitchen, breathing heavily through her open mouth. She heard the sound again; three distinct taps. For a moment she wondered whether it was Alu; but he never knocked when he came at night and he knew that her door was not barred. The taps sounded as though they were farther away, on the back door perhaps. Through the barred window at the other end of the room she saw the courtyard and the tiled, sloping roof, daubed with patches of moonlight filtering through the mango tree. It was very quiet; even the cicadas were still.

The taps again, and she was almost sure now that they were on the back door. Quietly, wrapping her sari tight around her, she went out of her room, down the passage to the door. There were three clear knocks on the thick wooden door. She stood undecided for a moment, wondering whether she ought to call Rakhal or Alu. But then she decided against it and whispered: Ke? Who’s there?

Ami, she heard her father’s voice. It’s me, open the door, Maya, he said urgently, in an undertone. Maya sighed with relief: it was three days since she had seen him last. He had come to the house, late one night, weak with hunger and asked for a handful of puffed rice. He would eat nothing more and, though she had begged him to stay, he had disappeared again that night.

She pulled the latch open and flung her arms around his bony, naked waist. Quiet now, he said, laughing and running his hand over her head. Quiet, quiet. Look who I’ve brought with me. And only then did Maya notice that there was a woman standing beside him.

She was tall; Maya noticed that even in that first moment of bewildered surprise, but she could not see her face, for she had her sari hooded over her head. She had a bundle on her waist, or so Maya thought, but then the bundle stirred and whimpered, and she saw that it was a child. Shombhu Debnath ushered them into the house and turned to latch the door. The woman put out a hand and caught Maya’s arm. The anchal of her sari slipped off her head, and Maya saw that it was Parboti-debi. Parboti-debi smiled at Maya and pressed her arm. Her thin, lined face was radiant with joy. I’ve come, Maya, she said. He got me out at last.

Maya stared at her dumbstruck. Parboti-debi held up her daughter, and stroked her pale, delicate cheeks with a finger. Look, she said proudly, she’s better already now that she’s with her father.

Maya looked at her father, and for the first time that she could remember he would not meet her eyes. He turned away and lowered his long craggy face, like a boy waiting for judgement. And when she was silent he shot her a sheepish glance and whispered: You’ll look after her tonight, Maya? Give her a place to sleep? No?

Slowly Maya stretched out her hand and touched him on his arm. Yes, she said, I’ll look after her, and now you go and rest, too. He would have liked to draw her to him and kiss her on the top of her head as he used to when she was a child, but Maya was suddenly as old as he was, and stronger — strong enough to embrace every element of his being with love and compassion — so he turned gruffly away, while she led Parboti-debi to the store-room by the kitchen.

In the morning Maya’s mind teemed with confused explanations as she waited for Toru-debi in the kitchen. She had already told Alu and Rakhal about Parboti-debi’s sudden arrival. Alu had said little; his only interest in the matter was how it would affect her, Maya. But Rakhal’s face had mottled with anger and his scar had burst open. The puritanical code of physical strength and purity which ruled him like some deep inviolable instinct was outraged; his mind had recoiled reflexively from the offence. He had stormed away from her. But, still, Maya didn’t worry too much about Rakhal — he had hardly spoken to his father for years anyway. Toru-debi was a worry of a different kind, founded on a fear of shame and embarrassment; Maya had no equipment to deal with situations of that kind.

Maya rose as Toru-debi came into the kitchen with her hair hanging loose over her shoulders, on her way to the pond for her morning bath. Parboti-debi was sitting cross-legged in a corner, feeding her daughter out of a bowl. Toru-debi saw her as soon as she stepped in and froze in the doorway. Parboti-debi rose to her feet and covered her head with her sari. Maya darted protectively in front of her and began to blurt out an explanation.

Toru-debi ignored her. She smoothed her hair back with one hand and looked away, smiling crookedly. So that’s it, she murmured. I should have known. Maya stopped, for she saw that Toru-debi was talking to herself. So that’s it, she said again.

What? Maya said apprehensively. Toru-debi frowned at her significantly, pressing her lips together, and beckoned. It’s the blouses, she whispered into Maya’s ear. She wants the blouses.

Blouses? Maya said.

Yes, yes, Toru-debi whispered impatiently, she wants the blouses. I know. Toru-debi squared her shoulders, drew her loose hair into a knot, and arranged a strained social smile on her face. Ah, Parboti-didi, she said, I’m glad you could come, but you shouldn’t have bothered. Of course, I knew you were coming, I dreamt — I dream a lot, you know — I knew you and Bhudeb-babu would come today. But you shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble. I haven’t forgotten, really. It’s just that … so much work. But never mind. I’ll finish them, right now. You can show them to Bhudeb-babu and tell him that he doesn’t have to come.

Maya tried to break in again, but Toru-debi stopped her with an angry frown. Just wait here, Parboti-didi, she said, assuming her smile again. Have some tea. It won’t take long; I’ll finish them in a couple of hours.

And, forgetting her bath, Toru-debi hurried back towards her room.

Alu was in the courtyard, watching the kitchen. He ran up to Toru-debi: What happened? In an agitated rush, Toru-debi said: It’s the blouses, she wants the blouses. I promised her six embroidered blouses and then I forgot. And now she’s told Bhudeb-babu and he’s going to come, too, and God knows what’ll happen when he finds out that they aren’t ready yet.

Involuntarily Alu grinned: It’s got nothing to do with blouses.

The blood rushed to Toru-debi’s face. She drew her hand back, and for the first time in his life she slapped him. Fool, she cried trembling, half-witted idiot. Can’t you see how serious it is? He’s coming, and it’ll be the end of everything if the blouses aren’t ready. Only the sewing machine can save us now. Whatever happens, I’ll never let your uncle say that it was because of the blouses.

Alu, rubbing his cheek, watched her run into her room.

Balaram had spent the night in the canvas shelter he had rigged up on the dust path which ran past his house to Bhudeb Roy’s. It was surrounded by a circle of heavy oil-drums, with an opening where the circle met the path which ran to the front door of his house. The shelter was only a canvas sheet, stretched over the drums, and held in place by stones. There was a small tarpaulin-covered heap at one end of the circle, across from the shelter. That part of the circle was forbidden to Balaram; Rakhal had told him, at least ten times a day for days on end, never on any account to touch that heap or even go near it.

It was a long time since Balaram had slept through the night. It was at night that he expected Bhudeb Roy to make his move. The night, he told Alu and Rakhal when they tried to persuade him to spend his nights in the house, the night is that man’s element; we can never rest at night, not till it’s over. And so he spent his nights dozing fitfully and watching Bhudeb Roy’s house. He slept when he could during the day; there was plenty of time, for over the last few weeks the number of students in the school had dwindled away until one day none had turned up at all. Sometimes, obscurely, he worried about their absence. There was something watchful and wary about it, as though they were waiting for an outcome, a result: a verdict which they would do nothing to influence. He knew he ought to do something to bring them back, but at the same time their absence was a relief. The students would only be a complication, an extra, nagging worry, when all he wanted was to get the waiting over with; this unbearable waiting to see what Bhudeb Roy would do next.

Early that morning he had an intuition that something was going to happen, and soon. His shelter had been placed so that it commanded a good view of Bhudeb Roy’s house. Since dawn he had caught glimpses of Bhudeb Roy and his sons rushing about on their balcony and their roof. The walls blocked his view of the garden but now he could occasionally hear Bhudeb Roy bellowing at his men.

He had a strange feeling that something unusual was happening in his own house as well. No one had come out to him that morning. Even Alu, who always brought him a cup of tea in the morning, had not appeared. He ought to check perhaps but, then, on the other hand, it wouldn’t be wise to leave his post when there was so much happening in Bhudeb Roy’s house. He thought of shouting for Rakhal and Alu, or even perhaps beating the signal they had agreed upon on the empty kerosene-tin. But he decided against that, too: they probably wouldn’t hear him if he shouted, and the signal was only for emergencies. For all he knew, this was a damp squib. And anyway, if something happened, he had only to reach out for the tin, and Rakhal would be there; he had worked out that it would take him no more than five seconds to reach the circle of oil-drums from the house.

Balaram slapped his face twice, for his eyelids were growing heavy again. He shook his head. It seemed to him suddenly that the noise in Bhudeb Roy’s garden had grown louder. Then, equally suddenly, it stopped. Balaram leant forward on his battlement of oil-drums, tense as a spring, looking from Bhudeb Roy’s empty balcony to the gate which led out of his garden to the path, and back again.

The gate opened and Bhudeb Roy slowly steered his bulk out into the dust path. His sons and his hired men swarmed out behind him. Balaram, breathless, snatched up the empty kerosene-tin and a bunch of hooped wires, and hammered out the signal. The bangs and rattles were deafeningly loud, but Balaram couldn’t help adding his voice: Alu, Rakhal … ashchhe re, ashchhe … they’re coming. His voice sounded oddly feeble to him; perhaps it was just the noise of the tin. He felt his knees trembling, and absent-mindedly he reached down to steady them with his hands. Then he slapped his thigh, angry with himself for wasting time, and leant against an oil-drum and watched Bhudeb Roy advance down the path with his men, in a cloud of dust.

Bhudeb Roy was no longer in the lead; he and his sons were surrounded by his hired men. They were walking fast. They were close. He could see their faces clearly now; he could see the splinters on the sharpened ends of their wooden poles and the bicycle chains, looped expertly around their wrists, like bracelets, with their barbed ends swinging loose; he could almost feel the oiled links in his palm, snaking out stiffly when they turned sideways, swinging freely when they hung downwards. He reached down and ran his palm over the two-foot brass cylinder of his best squirt-gun. He pressed his thumb on the tiny pointed mouth of the nozzle and drew the handle back. Once again he rehearsed his plan: all he had to do was reach Bhudeb Roy with one burst of carbolic, only one, and he would turn and run as fast as his legs would carry him. That was all. His stomach churned: but would it work? Would it work? It had seemed so certain when he planned it, but now, with them so close, their dust in his nose … He could see the sweat hanging on their moustaches now, and their pocket combs, and the folded flick-knives sticking out of their breast pockets. How could it be? It usually took minutes to walk from Bhudeb Roy’s house to his; how were they so close so soon? He sensed his front door opening, heard feet flying down the path, and then Alu and Rakhal were crouching behind the oil-drums on either side of him.

Bhudeb Roy, less than a hundred yards away, saw them, too. He shouted, and his men came to a halt, milling around him, raising a cloud of red dust. Bhudeb Roy cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: Balaram-babu, I want to talk to you. Balaram could see his face, but Bhudeb Roy had been careful not to expose himself any more than strictly necessary. Two men stood in front of him, shielding his immense body.

Balaram-babu, Bhudeb Roy shouted again, don’t worry; this has nothing to do with you. It’s that swine Shombhu Debnath I want. Do you know what’s going on in your house? Do you know that he’s kidnapped my wife and daughter and hidden them somewhere in your house? It’s true; my men have seen foot-prints. Are you, a respectable man, a teacher, a colleague, going to shelter someone who’s kidnapped your neighbour’s wife?

Balaram, intent on gauging the distance between them, heard hardly a word, but he shouted back: Bhudeb-babu, the one thing I’ve learnt from you is that there’s only one answer to anything you say.

As he spoke he wondered at the inexplicable note of politeness that had crept into his voice. He pointed the squirt-gun into the air, deciding that a high trajectory would add to his range, and aimed. Then Rakhal, who had been crouching beside him, ducked below the oil-drums and crawled across the circle, to the tarpaulin-covered heap at the other end. He reached under the tarpaulin and brought out a bottle and a rag. Then he dipped the rag in a tin of kerosene and stuffed it into the neck of the bottle. With a wink at Alu, he struck a match. At the same moment, Balaram drew his shaking hand back and took a grip on the wooden bar of the handle. They heard Bhudeb Roy shout: Balaram-babu, don’t make trouble, stay out of this … And then Balaram slammed the bar forward.

The carbolic acid shot out in an arc and spattered on to the path, raising little mushrooms of dust, a good twenty yards short of Bhudeb Roy and his men. In a burst of jeers and angry shouts, the men started forward. Rakhal leapt to his feet with a tearing scream — Joi Ma Kali! — and threw the flaming bottle high into the air. It sailed out, where he had aimed it, towards the rice field which bordered the path, and disappeared into the rice. A moment later there was a muffled explosion, and the rice around the spot where the bottle had landed was blown flat against the ground, and shards of glass and scraps of metal shot harmlessly upwards.

For a moment Bhudeb Roy stood rooted to the path. Then he turned and ran, with quick waddling steps, towards his house. His men had already sprinted far ahead of him.

Come back for more later, Rakhal called out after them, laughing. We’ll have some more ready for you.

Half an hour later, when it was clear that Bhudeb Roy’s men were not going to return soon, Alu ran into the house to look for Maya. He shouted her name in the courtyard, and looked in the rooms, but she was not in the house. He found her behind the house with her father. They were sitting on the stone parapet which encircled the well, with their legs dangling over the side. He jumped up beside her and began telling her all about it at once. Yes, she said, I know. I watched it from the room above the front door. But he was too excited to stop, and he carried on, gesticulating and stammering, wishing he had the words to tell her of the indescribable excitement, the sheer gut-wrenching thrill of that moment after Balaram’s burst of carbolic fell short, and the men started to run towards them, and Rakhal threw the bottle into the air.

And they’ll come again, he ended lamely, when he noticed that they were not really listening to him. Rakhal said they would come back at night — with some more men and maybe even guns.

What did Bhudeb Roy say? Shombhu Debnath asked. Tell me again.

Alu told him, trying to remember the words he had used. Shombhu Debnath became very quiet, and stared thoughtfully down at the flashes of light in the water at the bottom of the well. Soon after, he jumped off the parapet and walked away.

A little later, when Alu was back in the circle of drums, talking to Rakhal about what might happen next, the front door opened and Shombhu Debnath came out with Parboti-debi and the little girl. Shombhu Debnath was bare-chested, as always, but he had changed out of his usual red gamcha into a threadbare but clean dhoti, and a pair of green plastic sandals. His hair, washed and oiled, hung loose below his shoulders, framing his long angular face. He had a small cloth bundle balanced on his waist. Parboti-debi, her face covered, was leading her daughter by the hand. The girl, showing no sign of her illness, hopped up and down on the path, and Parboti-debi had to scold her to be still.

Shombhu Debnath hesitated before the oil-drums and cleared his throat. Balaram-babu, he said tentatively. Rakhal abruptly turned his back on him and began to hum a tune. Shombhu Debnath had to call out again before Balaram stirred. He turned, distracted and irritated: Ah, yes, who?

Shombhu Debnath smiled crookedly, showing his blackened teeth. Balaram-babu, he said, I’ve come to tell you that I … that is, we are going.

Going? Where?

In the two hours that had passed since he pushed the handle on the squirt-gun, Balaram had experienced a curious sensation, as though every minute that passed were a strop, honing his senses, his memory and his mind together into a ferociously sharp edge of concentration. It was as though that one act, that simple moment of action, had dissolved the past and the present, sensation and memory, mind and body, and distilled them into a blissful wholeness. Nothing mattered, nothing existed now but the ecstasy of waiting for the climax, the discovery which he knew to be at hand. Did Pasteur have an inkling of this terrifying joy when he went to examine Joseph Meister the morning after he had inoculated him with his untested vaccine? Did Einstein, in the last moments before his formula appeared before him on paper? And, still, with him it was different, for with him it was his own life, the past, the present, the future. Nothing else mattered, nothing else mattered now, but the discovery. He could hear a voice, and he even knew it dimly to be Shombhu Debnath’s voice, but it was just words strung together, a jumbled noise; it had no more meaning for him than a rumble of thunder does for an ascetic awaiting a vision.

Shombhu Debnath, ill at ease, shifting his feet, went on disjointedly: Yes, it’s best that we go. It’s me and her and the child that he wants. He has no quarrel with you: you’re two halves of an apple if you only knew it, one raw, one rotten, but the same fruit. I’m his real enemy, and I’ve won as much as I want to win, and now it’s time to run. Any healthy animal tricks what it can’t beat. He’ll never find me, and I’ll start again somewhere. This is how I came here — with a woman and a child and a bundle of clothes — and this is how I’ll go.

Balaram threw him a quick, anxious glance, and turned back to the red-dust path. Shombhu Debnath, misinterpreting his look, said hurriedly: Don’t worry about me, I’ll manage; I even have some money saved away (and he patted a lump next to the knot of his dhoti). The boy and the girl won’t grudge it to me; after all, I’ve brought them up. It’s not much, but enough to buy a loom somewhere. No need to worry about me. It’s them I’m worried about, Rakhal and Maya. Maya won’t come; she cries but she won’t come. Anyway, that’s God’s doing. I’ve brought her up, and now she’s old enough and she has her own life here. And the boy, why, he won’t even look at his father now.

Shombhu Debnath stopped, but there was no sign that Balaram had noticed. Shombhu Debnath stepped into the circle and shook his shoulder. Balaram started and sprang upright. A thick silvery lock of hair fell across his eyes, and brushing it away he noticed Parboti-debi for the first time. In embarrassment, he straightened his collar and tried to brush the dust and grime off his shirt. With an immense effort, he smiled politely and folded his hands. Nomoshkar, he said, and stopped, for he could think of nothing else to say. Going out? he started again, in desperation. You’re waiting for Bhudeb-babu, I suppose. He was here a moment ago; he’ll probably be back soon … He swallowed his words in confusion, and threw up his hands in a small, barely perceptible gesture, defeated by her presence. Instead he turned angrily on Shombhu Debnath: What is it? What do you want now? Can’t you see we’re busy? Let me get back to my work.

Shombhu Debnath tried to summon a laugh. Balaram-babu, he said, I don’t want anything for myself. I only want you to go back into the house and go away to Calcutta for a holiday. You must stop this: this is madness. There’s no reason to go on like this. No reason. Stop; I beg you, stop, and go away somewhere for a few days.

Balaram ran his eyes coldly over him. Certainly not, he snapped, and turned back to look at Bhudeb Roy’s house.

As the knowledge of his helplessness slowly dawned on Shombhu Debnath, his face crumpled. He groaned: He Shibo-Shombhu. Balaram-babu, you’ll destroy everyone without even stopping to think about it. You’re the best sadhu I’ve ever known, Balaram-babu, but no mortal man can cope with the fierceness of your gods.

Shombhu Debnath fell to his knees and clutched at Balaram’s feet. Tears streamed out of his red eyes. Balaram-babu, stop, he said, catching his breath in sobs. For the last time, I beg you, stop.

Balaram did not take his eyes off the house down the path, his enemy’s lair, so familiar that it was almost friendly, but now he saw in front of him a crowd of students, their clothes and features blurred and indistinct like an old photograph. They are crowding in all around him, on the floor, on the great flight of stairs opposite him, in the corridors. They are looking up at him — for he is standing on a chair — listening to him, listening intently. He can see that they are with him, that he has carried them past their initial embarrassment, accustomed them, in fifteen short minutes, to hearing someone talk rationally about underwear. He sees them stir; a little more and they’ll be cheering, just a little more. And then he hears a suppressed giggle somewhere in the stir and he raises his voice to meet this most dangerous of threats, laughter: a clean body is a new body, a new body a new life … For a moment it hangs in the balance, but then the laugh breaks through, and behind it is Middle Parting’s Calcutta-sharp face, split by an immense grin. Staring, disbelieving, he hears him shout: And what’re your little knickers like? He sees thin, shy Dantu throwing himself against Middle Parting, trying to stop him, and then he sees him going down as Middle Parting and his friends push forward. He hears them roar: Let’s see his clean little knick-ers for ourselves. We should have finished the job the first time. Come on. And the crowd breaks and surges towards him. He totters on his chair in unspeakable, bowel-loosening terror.

But this time he is not pushing his way out, not racing down the corridor with Middle Parting’s whoops behind him, his legs are not over the balustrade of the balcony, the ground is not rushing up to meet him. No, not this time.

Balaram stood erect and tall and looked straight into Shombhu Debnath’s streaming eyes. No, I cannot go, he said, rejoicing in the strength of his voice. Nobody shall move me from here. Here I stand, and here I shall stay.

Despite his tears, Shombhu Debnath could not stifle a chuckle. Stand on what, Balaram-babu?

Once Shombhu Debnath was on his way, Maya, painfully dry-eyed, ran out of the house, and together she and Alu watched him leading Parboti-debi and the little girl into the rice fields on the far side of the bamboo forest. Soon they were lost in a clump of coconut palms. Rakhal was looking angrily in the other direction and Balaram was crouched over an oil-drum, staring down the path.

Soon after, the gates opened and a car drove out, turned right and speeded away, sending up two plumes of dust. They could not be sure whether Bhudeb Roy was in the car: Rakhal said he was, but Alu had not seen him. After that the house was quiet. Rakhal grew restive. They’ll be back soon, he said, rubbing his hands restlessly, and then the real fight will start. But the sun climbed higher in the sky, the oil-drums began to radiate waves of heat, and the house was still quiet. Once Rakhal skirted through the rice fields, crouching low, until he could look through the wrought-iron gates. He saw four men sitting under the mango tree in the garden and smoking, but nothing else. Back in the circle of drums, he spat: Dush-shala; I should have got them with the bomb the first time.

Why didn’t you? said Alu. Rakhal looked at him in surprise: What? Get them with a bomb and spoil it all for myself? No, I want to get them when they’re really close; when I can pick out the motherfuckers who’re wearing the clothes they stole from me. I’ll break their bones individually, with my own hands, and then I’ll wrap them up in those very shirts, those very trousers, and throw them back over the garden wall. Here, look: this’ll break more bones than they’ve got. He pulled a bicycle chain, dotted with rust, out of his pocket and handed it to Alu.

Maya snatched it away, crying: For God’s sake, dada … But Rakhal looked at her so fiercely that she handed it back to him. Yes, kill us all, she said, we’re all weapons — and went back to the house.

At midday, with the sun overhead, the oil-drums began to blast heat, like a furnace. Even Balaram, though he never took his eyes off Bhudeb Roy’s house, drew back from the drums. Rakhal and Alu decided that they had to move into the house at least until the sun grew a little less fierce. Balaram protested feebly, but Rakhal was not in a mood for argument, and he threatened to carry him if he wouldn’t go of his own accord. So they all went, carrying Balaram’s squirt-guns and two buckets of carbolic. They went straight up to the room above the front door, so that they would be able to keep a watch on the path outside and Bhudeb Roy’s house.

The day wore on and there was still no sign of any activity in Bhudeb Roy’s house. Alu sensed that the village was unnaturally quiet: all day long he had not seen a single person out in the fields. It’s as though they’re waiting, he said to Rakhal; but Rakhal only laughed. In the afternoon, soon after Alu, Maya and Rakhal had eaten a quick meal of rice and fried potatoes, Nonder-ma disappeared. Where’d she go? Rakhal asked Maya. She said she was going out for a minute to Bolai-da’s to buy something, Maya said, and then … Rakhal shrugged, and Maya busied herself cooking their dinner.

At sunset Rakhal came to a decision. They’re going to come at night, he told Alu. That’s why they’re doing nothing now. That circle of drums isn’t going to be of any use now; if they come at night, they’ll get at the house first, perhaps from the back. We’ve got to move everything into the house. We’ll roll the drums here and stand them up before the front door. You can do that. But, first, we’ll have to get Maya and Toru-mashi out of the house.

How? said Alu doubtfully.

I’ll talk to Maya, said Rakhal, but his face was eloquent of uncertainty. They both climbed down to the courtyard, and Rakhal went to the kitchen. They both came out again soon, Rakhal crestfallen, Maya calmly wiping her hands on her sari. Alu looked from one to the other: So? If I leave, Maya said, where will I go? All right, all right, said Rakhal, but now go and talk to Toru-mashi. Maya nodded, and they watched her go to Toru-debi’s room, and hesitantly push the door open.

She came hurtling out a moment later. She threw the scissors at me, Maya gasped. She says the machine is about to save us: she’s finished four and she’s halfway through the fifth.

Didn’t you tell her, Alu said, that Parboti-debi …?

If you want to tell her anything, you can go and talk to her yourself, said Maya, and turning her back on them she went straight to the kitchen. Rakhal shrugged.

They went out to the circle of oil-drums, and Rakhal put Alu to work at moving the drums. It was a pointless and exhausting job, for the drums were all half-full of carbolic solution, and very heavy. Alu could only move them by levering them over, and rolling them along the ground, and that meant spilling most of the carbolic solution. But Rakhal insisted that it had to be done. In the meanwhile, with minute, painstaking care, Rakhal wrapped the contents of the tarpaulin-covered heap in jute sacks and carried them into the courtyard. He would not let Alu touch them. When he had finished, the stack of sacks seemed even larger to him than it had outside. But Rakhal was worried. It won’t be enough, he said, examining it. I’ll have to go and get some more. You stay here and don’t go out of the house. I’ll be back in ten minutes.

He ran out of the house, in the direction of their huts. He was back again soon, with a plastic sack over his shoulder. When he had added the sack to the others, the stack seemed huge to Alu. But Rakhal shook his head, dissatisfied. I don’t know if it’ll be enough, he said, but it’s too late now …

Soon after the last glow of twilight had faded away, they heard the whine of engines in the distance. A minute later Balaram shouted down: They’ve come, they’ve come. Alu raced up the ladder with Rakhal. Balaram was rigid in front of the window, pointing out, and for a moment his look of blissful, rapturous relief stopped Alu dead.

Looking out, they could see three jeeps at Bhudeb Roy’s gate, and they counted more than a dozen shadowy figures as they climbed out. Then three powerful searchlight beams simultaneously flared out of the jeeps’ hoods, blinding them. Rakhal caught Alu’s shoulder and led him to the ladder. He was perfectly calm and unhurried but the scar was shining brilliantly on his cheek.

There are more of them than I thought, he said as they climbed down the ladder. I’m not sure we have enough to deal with them in the sacks. And now it’ll be impossible to meet them hand-to-hand.

Alu caught a glimpse of Toru-debi, squatting in a corner of the courtyard with her head in her hands. But Rakhal had his back to her, and he went on urgently: You’ll have to do something. I can’t leave the house now. You remember the old loom-shed in our courtyard? The pits are covered with palm leaves and earth now, but you just have to pull and the palm leaves will come away. You’ll find a sack in the pit; it’s a sort of plastic, the kind you get fertilizers and insecticides in. Pick it up, but very, very carefully — do you understand? very very carefully — and bring it here. Don’t open it, don’t look into it, don’t shake it, don’t drop it. Just bring it here. And run as fast as you can. They’ll surround the house soon, and you won’t be able to get back after that.

It’s no use.

They both spun around. Toru-debi, watching them from her corner, let slip a bitter, mocking little laugh. It’s no use, she said again. Her hair hung around her face in damp, tangled knots; her sari had slipped off her shoulders, and her blouse had come undone. Her right hand was resting on her sewing machine beside her.

Nothing’s any use now, she muttered. It’s the end. Just one blouse left to go and he’s died. She ran her hand over the machine’s shining wheel and pulled, with all her strength. The wheel was absolutely rigid. She smiled at them: You see; he’s haunted. There’s something in him.

Suddenly her face lit up, as though something had occurred to her. She tore her blouse away, and her heavy breasts spilled out. She lifted the black, sinuously curved machine off its wooden base and settled it on her lap, clucking to herself.

Maya darted forward and caught her hands. Toru-debi looked up shamefacedly, straight at Alu. I thought it was you, she said confusedly. Aren’t you going to do something? Then all at once her naked breasts and shoulders collapsed as though an immense weight had been lowered on to them. What’s the use? she said. It’s the end.

Alu felt his throat go dry as he looked at the terrible incandescent desolation in her eyes. Then Rakhal was shaking him, whispering: Run, there’s no time to lose. And Maya was beside him, holding his hand: Yes, go. I’ll look after her; don’t worry.

In a daze, Alu found his slippers and went to the back door. But before he could slip out Toru-debi shouted again: Alu, come here. For one minute; only one.

Slowly Alu went back to her. She stood up and put the sewing machine in his arms. Throw it into the pond, she said. It’s dead. She leant forward and searched his eyes. But you’ll get me another, Alu my bit of gold, won’t you? she said, her voice full of trust. A better one?

Alu turned and ran blindly out of the door. Listen! he heard Maya shouting after him. He turned and saw her, framed in the doorway, smoothing back her thick black hair, biting her lip in worry. Come back soon, he heard her shout, and then he was running again, blindly, hardly noticing the weight of the sewing machine in his arms.

Before he could reach the forest, he heard footsteps and stopped, alert again. Then he recognized a familiar bandy-legged figure racing towards him. Kahan? Where are you going? Bolai-da shouted, panting. He spoke in Hindi, as he always had to Alu, ever since he taught him the language. Where? What’s happening? Nonder-ma said …

Then he noticed the sewing machine and his eyes widened. Alu put the sewing machine into his arms. There, he said, look after that. I’ll take it back from you some day. And don’t go to the house.

And then he was running again, flying down the path, grateful that he knew it so well, that the darkness made no difference. One of his slippers tore and he kicked it off in mid-step, without checking. He was almost there, no further than a few yards, when a microphone boomed behind him: This is a warning to you; this is a warning. Come out peacefully.

Alu stopped and turned towards the house. The bamboo thickets where the house lay were silhouetted against a curtain of metallic light. He forgot all about the loom, all about Rakhal’s instructions, and began to run towards the house. The microphone boomed again: This is a warning, this is the last warning to you. Then, with a high whistle, a brilliant sunburst of light arced into the sky and the whole forest shimmered in the eerie silver glow. He saw it reach its zenith and curve downwards, and fall out of his sight, behind the bamboo. There was a moment of absolute stillness when it struck him that the light must have fallen very near the house. And then the earth shook and the air seemed to come alive and hit him with walls of force, and when he opened his eyes again exactly where the house ought to have been there were orange flames shooting into the sky.

Alu began to run again. His whole mind went blank, except for the rhythm of his pounding feet. He saw a figure standing on the path ahead of him, but the familiar bandy legs meant no more than an obstacle blocking his way, and instinctively he turned his shoulder and threw himself at it. But Bolai-da sidestepped deftly and next moment he had Alu pinned to his chest in a wrestler’s lock. What d’you want to go back to the house for? he said as Alu struggled against his arms. There’s nobody there any more but the police buggers. There’s nothing for you to do there. God’s cremated them all.

Alu twisted and clawed at his arm, trying to break the lock. Exasperated, Bolai-da pulled one of his hands loose and hit him hard across the cheek, and Alu slumped over. Bolai-da put a shoulder under one of his arms and half-carried, half-dragged him into the forest. God, he mumbled, you should have seen that flare … right over, straight into the courtyard, and the whole place — up like a bomb. They’ll be all around it now, looking for you. But they’re not going to get you. I named you and I’ll see you safe somewhere …

Alu, stumbling along beside him, inert and uncomprehending, could only see the flames of the known world licking the skies.

Chapter Eight. Going West

Until very recently it used to take three days to travel to Mahé from Calcutta by train (it takes a little less now because of the New Bongaigaon Express). It takes so long because Mahé is at the other end of the subcontinent — on the west coast, only a few hundred miles north of the southernmost tip of the Peninsula.

The older part of Mahé town is on a knoll, overlooking the sluggish green Mahé river which flows down from the thickly forested Idikki hills to the east. The town and its tiny hinterland are surrounded by Kerala, and at first sight it looks like any other coastal Malabar town. But actually Mahé is not a part of Kerala. It owes this, like the church with its slate-topped steeple which juts above the town, to the fact that it was once a French colony — a tiny island of Gallic domination in a sea of British-occupied territory.

The sea which breaks on Mahé’s beaches is the Arabian Sea and it washes in wealth. Mahé has the air of a boom town, but on a modest, muted scale, for it is actually a very small and inconspicuous place. Those who have heard the name usually remember it only indistinctly or for an examination, and very few know where to find it on a map.

On the morning of the third day of his journey, when he was only a few hours away from Mahé, Jyoti Das was very bored and very restless. He knew he ought not to be, for the landscape he had woken up to that morning was strikingly beautiful, especially after — to give things their proper names — the desert he had shut his eyes on in Tamil Nadu the night before. It was like waking up in an extravagant garden. Everything was green; there were greens of so many shades whirling past his window — the new-leaf green of banana trees, the deep emerald of rice, the feathery darkness of coconut palms. There seemed to be no exposed surface, no bit of rock, no sand, nothing that was not draped in green. The soil seemed to be writhing in labour, in its effort to push greenery out at every angle. Even the air smelt rich — of loam, cardamom and cloves, salted with a tang of the sea. The coconut palms jostled with each other on both sides of the tracks, crowding out the horizon and shrinking the sky to a little blue patch, directly above. Sometimes, through the mass of slender trunks, he could catch the scimitar flash of a lagoon in the distance. And in the east, hanging in the air, above the palms, he could see pale, silvery mountains.

But three days of sitting still, even if in a first-class compartment, would bore anyone. All that Jyoti Das could feel now was the stiffness in his joints and the grime on his skin. He could see veins of dirt in the creases of his shirt and trousers, but there was nothing he could do about it, for he had used up all the changes of clothing he had brought with him on the train. That worried him, for it meant that he would have to meet Dubey, the ASP in Mahé, in grimy clothes. Dubey was a real ASP, posted in a district, and ASPs in districts live like minor potentates, with platoons of orderlies to wash and iron their uniforms. Jyoti Das knew Dubey a little; they had been contemporaries at the Academy, though not friends, for Dubey had been known there chiefly by his reputation for stupidity (which, thought Jyoti, was saying quite a lot in that crowd). Dubey, very likely, never wore the same uniform twice in a month. He had lived well, even at the Academy. Especially after his marriage, when he was given, or so people said, a television set, a refrigerator, a car and several lakhs of rupees along with a wife. But, then, those were the going rates for a police officer in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh.

At least there was the possibility of seeing a paradise flycatcher. He had brought his watercolours with him, just in case. He had seen one the last time he was in Kerala, on a compulsory tour of India during his training, but his colleagues were with him then, and he would not have dreamt of pulling out his sketchpad with them watching. This time, perhaps. As for the case, it was almost certainly going to be a waste of time, despite Dubey’s urgent telex. Five months had passed since the raid, and the case was more or less closed as far as he was concerned. But he shut his eyes, and turned away from the window, for even now he could not help shutting his eyes whenever he thought of the raid and saw that flare — fired only as a warning — sending up the whole house. God, there was no point in going on with the business. But Dubey’s telex had arrived, and the DIG had sent him on his way. What was the use? Dubey could have handled whatever there was to handle himself, instead of dragging him all the way from Calcutta.

Of course there was the paradise flycatcher, but hardly worth being dragged all the way from Calcutta for, especially in winter with the zoo full of birds. There was something else, too, but about that he didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry. His mother had wanted him to take a look at a girl. He had more or less ritually refused to go. But his mother had gone ahead and fixed a day, and in the end he had agreed to go with her. He didn’t particularly wish to be married, but he didn’t particularly wish not to be married. And if it brought peace at home — well, then. But now it would have to wait. Of course, there was the flycatcher.

As the train draws in at Mahé, Jyoti Das is irritated and thoroughly resentful — at being made to sit in a train for three days, at the unnecessary exertion, at the waste of time … A waste of time, he thinks. He is wrong, but he does not know it. He is about to be launched on the greatest adventure of his life.

Dubey was Jyoti’s first surprise: looking for the lean gangling figure he remembered, he saw instead a plump, sleek man spilling over with an unexpectedly warm welcome. Dubey disposed of his luggage by snapping his fingers at a constable, and led him out of the little station to a jeep.

Jyoti found himself squeezed between Dubey and the driver, trying to think of something to say. Surreptitiously he glanced at Dubey’s uniform. It was perfectly creased and ironed, the material much finer than any a mere uniforms allowance can buy. That’s the life, he thought. Be a small-town cop and prosper. Aloud he said: You’re looking healthy. How’s your asthma?

Oh, all right, Dubey answered. How’re your paintings?

Taken aback, Jyoti Das said: Not bad, not bad. And how’s Mrs Dubey?

Fine, fine. Went back to Delhi last year. Doesn’t like it here. And you? Still a happy bachelor?

Yes, Das said quickly. Now tell me what all this hurry was about. Have you got him?

No. Not yet. But we know he’s in this area, and we’ll definitely be able to trace some of his associates, so we’ll probably get him soon. That’s why I thought it would be best if you came personally. After all, it’s your case and I don’t want to take any undue credit for it (No, thought Das, I’m sure you don’t). It’s a good thing you’ve come actually, because just this morning some of my chaps in one of the villages around here brought in someone promising. If we get anything out of him, we should be able to pick up your bugger in a day or two, maybe even today. You’ve come just in time.

That’s very quick work, said Das. How’d you do it?

Well, we got the report you people sent — that the Suspect was believed to be somewhere in this area. There are a number of extremist groups around here, so I thought at once that he’d probably try to contact them. Then we got the sketch from your artists and I called in my station-house officers from the villages and showed it to them and told them about the case. After that, information began trickling in. It was easy. But this man we’ve picked up today is the real key.

Have you talked to him yet?

No, he’s still in a station outside the town, Dubey said. We’ll go and talk to him a little later.

The car stopped outside a yellow, tiled bungalow overlooking the sea. This is where you’ll stay, said Dubey, leading Das to a veranda. He gestured at a cane chair and ordered tea. Now, he said, what can you tell me about this business? In answer Das took a thick file from his briefcase and handed it to him. Dubey grimaced: Hell yar, can’t you just tell me? Why all this reading-sheading?

There’s not much to tell, Das said abruptly. You’ve seen the report we sent out already. I suppose you know there was an encounter with an extremist group in a village about five months ago? There was an accident, sort of, and most of them died. But one got away — there was a corpse missing. We managed to trace him to Calcutta. He was hiding with one of his uncle’s associates. I put some chaps on the job, and that was a mistake, for the bird had flown by the time they got there. Anyway the old man told them that the Suspect had ganged up with some Keralites in a textile factory in Calcutta. We got hold of one of the gang but we couldn’t get much out of him. Only that the Suspect was heading south, probably towards Kerala. I talked to the old man myself later. He had nothing much to say, that is, nothing important to say — he had a lot to say otherwise. After that we just followed the routine and sent you people a circular and a sketch. Frankly, we didn’t expect anything to come of it. Actually, to tell you the truth, I’d be quite happy to put an end to this business — I can’t see that it’s important in any way. But the DIG …

Das stopped to look at Dubey. The DIG, he continued, thinks it’s very important. He shrugged: Anyway, that’s more or less all that’s in the files.

Jyoti Das was right — that was all the files said. What else could they say? They knew nothing of the days Alu spent after Bolai-da smuggled him into a truck and sent him to Gopal’s flat in Calcutta. They knew nothing of the time he spent wandering blindly through the city, without stopping to eat, without even wondering how it came to be that he had lost the sensation of hunger. Or of the bench in the Maidan where his straying feet led him every night, to sit and wonder whether a match would still burn his skin, whether that at least was still left to him.

And when he returned to the flat on Hazra Road, Gopal, waiting for him, every night, would ask gently: Where did you go today? Every night the same question and every night Gopal would watch the same bewilderment play across the potato face, for really he did not know. For nights without end Gopal would sit in his easy chair and weep for Balaram, friend of his youth, his tears splashing heavily into the open book on his lap; and, weeping, he would watch Alu and wait for the first hint of an answering tear — for a sign at least — of grief, anything but that dumb, blank bewilderment. But there was nothing.

Only once did Alu have anything to tell him, and then for hours: he talked of a machine, a sewing machine in a display window. He talked of its sinuous curves, its bulging, powerful chest and tapering underbelly, of its shining blackness and dull gold lettering, of its poised needle and the inexhaustible miracle which can join together two separate pieces of cloth. He talked on until dawn, while Gopal wept unheeded, not only for Balaram this time, but for Alu, too, and his ebbing reason. Gopal did not know that that day Alu had won a battle for his spirit.

But soon Gopal stopped worrying for him, for one night Alu showed him two boils, the size of duck’s eggs, one on his leg and the other under his armpit — not ordinary boils, but suppurating craters of pus, as though his flesh had gathered itself together and tried to burst from his body. Gopal embraced Alu that night and laughed. Let them be, he said. They have nothing to do with you; it’s only Balaram trying to come back to the world.

But Alu covered his leg and glowered at him. Not just Balaram, he growled.

Gopal nodded wisely and turned away.

There were more and more, all over Alu’s body, and the pain drove him to walk farther and farther afield — to the crowds fighting their way out of Sealdah Station, to Howrah Bridge, across, and still farther, until sirens were shrieking all around him and he was swept away by crowds pouring out of factory gates. It was then that by some inexplicable turn of fortune Alu did something he had not done before — he stopped at a tea-stall and asked for a cup of tea.

It was there that he met Rajan.

That day, dark, brooding Rajan told him about the great factories all around them. He talked of Jacquard looms and streams of punched paper which could draw patterns with warp strings faster than the eye could see; of looms blessed with the sense of touch, automatic looms, which could send out feelers to sense whether their shuttles were empty or not; of looms without any real shuttles at all, in which hurtling projectiles flew through the empty space of the shed, between the two parted streams of the warp yarn, to bite into a waiting bobbin and carry it back; of looms in which curled iron rapiers served for shuttles, snapping through the shed to carry the weft in a pierced eye; of shuttles of which he had only read, which fly on jets, like aeroplanes … That night Gopal was awake again till dawn, listening to Alu talk of the factory and Rajan and, of course, machines.

After that Alu went back to the tea-shop every day, before Rajan’s shift. Sometimes he talked of his own loom and the cloth he had woven, and to his astonishment he found that his language was no mystery to Rajan. For Rajan was of Kerala’s great caste of Chalias who for centuries have woven and traded in simple white cloth. There was no loom anywhere that was a mystery to Rajan.

One day he smuggled Alu into the mill he worked in: a huge bustling vault, the machines new, awesome in their potency and their size; the men minuscule, compressed, struggling under the weight of the giants. It was a miracle which had no end — webs of yarn shooting into the maws of the automatic looms from whirling bobbins, cloth pouring out in waterfalls, folding itself into ordered bales …

But where are the peanuts? Eyes riveted to the stage, craning over the hundreds of shoulders in front of him, Alu sends his hands wandering through his pockets, looking for that just-bought jet of twisted paper, filled with nuts, whole coarse-veined nuts waiting to be broken, waiting for the red kernels inside to be worried out and rubbed in minty green salt, for the shells to drop to the floor to be stamped into the earth by those thousands of feet, all shifting nervously now, as the whole great tent watches, awestruck, while the demons dance, encircling the heroes in rings of fire, beating them to the ground with their uncountable arms, dancing on their chests with their clawed feet, reaching for the victory that is almost theirs. And just then, suddenly, all too accidentally, a spanner drops into the shooting rapids of cloth, into the heart of the grinding machine, and, screaming, the demons freeze. A sigh of relief rises from the men on the floor, and they lean back for a few stolen minutes to finish conversations and light cigarettes. But Alu is on his feet, cheering and throwing peanuts, until he has to be led outside, still noisily celebrating the tiny victories of the men who live with demons.

Outside they found Gopal, standing at the tea-shop, his face crumpled with anxiety, holding a cloth bundle. When he saw Alu he ran across the road and hugged him, stammering with relief.

Such news! An elderly brother-in-law in the High Court (mainly revenue and taxation, but also a few criminal sometimes to make a bit of money) was visiting a prospective client in Lalbazar Police Station when he heard search orders being given out for an address in Hazra Road — Gopal’s address. Gopal’s house was to be searched; there could be no doubt for whom.

The bundle was thrust into Alu’s hands. Alu opened it and found the few clothes Gopal had bought him, Gopal’s own copy of the Life of Pasteur and 8000 rupees. Gopal smiled in embarrassment. Your uncle had left it with me, to invest. It’s yours now. Alu looked at him and Gopal looked away. But Alu didn’t argue. He bent down and touched Gopal’s feet. Gopal hugged him once, blindly, and then he was gone, back to the flat in Hazra Road, to send his wife away and wait for the police alone.

Rajan knew, as soon as he saw Alu standing in the road with a bundle in his hands. Alu tried to mumble an explanation, but Rajan stopped him. What was the use of talking and explanations? Everyone saw these things every day. It was not the time for talk. Within minutes Alu had a list of addresses and a letter. With those, and boils erupting all over him, he passed down a chain of Rajan’s Chalia kinsmen, scattered over every factory along the South-Eastern Railway, paying out parts of his 8000 rupees where Rajan had told him to, down, down, steadily southwards, stopping to catch his breath in the great mills of Madurai and Coimbatore, till whispers came that the police had orders and a sketch, Rajan had been taken in … Then it was time to leave the railways behind, time to slip into the forests of the Nilgiris, led by Rajan’s great-grandfather’s cousin’s great-grandson, along elephant trails and deer tracks through clouds in blue mountains, then over the watershed, into Kerala, a step into a magical prawn malai curry, redolent of cardamom and cinnamon, sharp with cloves, sweet with the milk of coconuts enough to float the world. He spent the nights secreted away in the Chalia quarters of scattered villages, lulled to sleep by the cheerful knocking of hundreds of fly-shuttles in familiar looms; but then again, suddenly, rumours of informers, of reports to the police, so faster still, westwards, down through the mountains, faster and faster …

Where were the files then?

A little before sunset Das and Dubey set out for the village in which the prisoner was being held. The car took them into the little town and towards the river, through narrow roads lined with brightly lit shops. Their windows were crammed with bottles and their signs read: IMFL–Indian-Made Foreign Liquor.

Dubey pointed out of the window. Do you booze? This is the place for it. Dirt cheap and good stuff, too.

Das’s eyes slid down to Dubey’s wrist, to a heavy gold watch. He stared at it enviously. Of course, he could have got it from his father-in-law. Could have. A town which lives on the liquor trade — gold watches were probably thrown at everyone from the revenue clerk upwards. What else could one ask for? No DIG sitting on you, forget about promotions and life insurance and provident funds and house-rent allowances. Money no problem — a peaceful, simple life.

Dubey was pointing at a large pink and green house with round portholes for windows. It bristled with air-conditioners. Some of the houses around it were larger, some newer, some even more strikingly opulent.

That man went to al-Ghazira for five years, Dubey said. He was just a mechanic and look at him now. Look at all the rest of them. He’s almost illiterate, you know, but I’m still ashamed to ask him to my house.

Don’t worry, Das murmured. You’ll catch up; it’s just a matter of time.

Of course, Dubey went on, ignoring him, a lot of them are smugglers. You won’t believe how much smuggling goes on here. Mainly it’s gold coming in, from all over the world — Kenya, Tanzania, Iran, the Gulf. But there are other things, too — electronic things, watches …

Look! he jogged Das’s elbow. A paper-thin slice of metal lay in his palm, barely filling it. He poised a finger over a button. There was a soft electronic chime and the display panel lit up. He ran his fingers over it and numbers flashed on to the panel and disappeared, accompanied by a tattoo of chimes. Nice thing, no? Dubey said. Lots of these things lying around here.

He jabbed Das in the ribs, grinning: Maybe your DIG likes these little things? I’m sure he has a son or two who have exams? No?

Das shook his head and looked out of the window. They were passing a lagoon. The water flamed with the crimson of the setting sun. Palms leant languidly across the water and they could see boatmen in conical hats rowing their catamarans out to sea.

It’s very beautiful here, Das said.

Yeah, yeah, Dubey said. It’s beautiful for five days, a week. After that …

Das spotted a Malabar kingfisher on a telegraph pole and turned in his seat as they drove past it. What’s the matter? Dubey said curiously. It’s a …, Das began and stopped himself just in time. He remembered an occasion at the Academy when, interrupting one of Dubey’s monologues on their colleagues, he had pointed out a pheasant-tailed jaçana.

Which year did he join? Dubey had said worriedly, searching his mind. Is he in the police? I don’t think I’ve heard the name …

It had made a good story, but on the whole it had told against him rather than against Dubey. People had thought he was showing off. Dubey had been furious. Still, Malabar kingfishers were probably all right, but if Dubey ever heard him talking about some less familiar species, like Siberian cranes or something like that, he was more than likely to send off a telegram to their superiors reporting him for consorting with undesirable foreigners. He was said to be very competitive, Dubey, for all his thick-headedness. Wouldn’t stop at anything.

What? said Dubey again, waiting for an answer.

I was wondering, Das said quickly. You explained what they smuggle in, but what do they smuggle out? Coconuts?

Coconuts! Dubey laughed. Those people don’t want coconuts over there. No, what they smuggle out is people.

He stopped and stroked his moustache. Sometimes I wish, he said, that someone would smuggle me out — to another posting, I mean. I’m sick of this place. It would help if I got a promotion or an especially good annual report. If we get your chap today or within the next couple of days, maybe your DIG … They say he knows a lot of people.

He looked anxiously across. Das nodded. The car turned off the main road and turned into a narrow lane flanked by banks of earth and laterite walls. A little later it stopped outside a flat-roofed yellow building, unmistakably a police station. The squat, ugly building contrasted sharply with the houses around it, which were white with ornately carved wooden posts, and tiled roofs that stopped just a few feet short of the ground.

A constable in starched khaki shorts came running out of the station. He stood at attention and saluted, his stiff shorts swinging like bells. Dubey acknowledged the salute with a brief gesture. Das saw a crowd of children gathering across the street. As he walked past, one of them called out shyly: Hul-lo hul-lo, jol-ly fel-low.

Embarrassed, Das looked quickly ahead, fervently hoping the constable would not make a scene. The constable had not noticed. As he stepped into a large neon-lit room, he heard the boy chant again, somewhere behind hin: Hul-lo hul-lo, jol-ly fel-low.

A table at the far end of the room was covered with plates of food and bottles of soft drinks. Dubey rounded on the constable. How many times have I told you not to waste money like this? he shouted in Hindi.

The constable looked down at his sandalled feet, smiling shyly and wriggling. Automatically, drawn by the force of years of habit, his hand reached under his shorts to pull his shirt straight. Stop that! Dubey snapped. Stand at attention when I’m talking to you.

The constable jumped to attention. Dubey shrugged and turned to Das: Come on, we may as well eat, now that it’s here. They sat behind the table on straight-backed chairs and filled their plates with banana chips and crisp muruka.

Have you talked to the man? Dubey asked the constable.

Yes, saar-ey, the constable answered.

What did he say?

The constable scratched his head. This man is a Chalia, saar-ey, he said, and he has a relative in Calcutta. A man came to him with a letter from his relative, so he led him to Mahé. After that he won’t say anything.

What do you mean, he won’t say anything? Dubey said and stopped abruptly. There was a low but distinct rumbling sound outside the police station. He listened for a moment, his head cocked. He decided to ignore it: Why won’t he say anything?

We tried, saar-ey, the constable said, but he won’t talk. Perhaps you could talk to him.

Does he speak Hindi or English?

Yes, a little bit of Hindi.

All right, Dubey said, bring him in.

The constable gestured to another, who disappeared into a corridor. Again they heard the rumbling sound outside. Dubey picked up a cane and pointed out of the window: What’s that noise?

The constable screwed up his eyes and peered out of the window into the darkness. Just some local people, saar-ey, he said dismissively, gathered outside the arrack-shop across the road.

The other constable came back, leading a bare-chested man in a green lungi. He was a powerfully built man, with a broad muscular chest, but now his eyes were bloodshot and he hung his head. Dubey looked him over and told a constable to switch the neon lights off and train a light on the prisoner’s face. Das smiled wrily: Copy-book technique.

Dubey gave him a twitch of his lips in acknowledgement. Then, patting his open palm with the cane, he walked up to the prisoner and said softly: I just want to know one thing, that’s all. Where is that man now?

The prisoner hung his head in silence. Dubey looked at him for a moment, then he spun on his booted heel and smiled thinly at Das: Why don’t we see what the Union Secretariat can do?

Das hesitated, taken by surprise, but Dubey was watching him, smiling. He got up and went up to the man in the lungi, trying hard not to advertise his nervousness by swallowing. He took Dubey’s cane from him and prodded the man in the chest. Listen, you, he said. He raised his voice, for he could sense a hint of a tremor at the back of his throat: Don’t make trouble for yourself. Just tell us: where is that man now?

The prisoner stared silently at Das’s shoes. Das rubbed his right hand. Then he pulled his hand back and smashed the back of his palm across the prisoner’s face, swivelling with the blow, throwing all his weight behind it. The man howled and clutched his cheek. Slowly he crumpled to his knees.

Das stuffed his smarting hand into his pocket before the temptation to rub it could become irresistible. He felt his bile churn and rise, searing the back of his throat. He glanced across the room hoping Dubey would not notice his hand shaking. Dubey raised a congratulatory eyebrow. Tough cop, he said.

Suddenly Das was startled. He seemed to hear a chant somewhere: Hul-lo hul-lo, jol-ly fel-low. The noise outside had grown; now scattered shouts pierced the rumbling. He heard the chant again, close by. Looking around him he spotted a pair of eyes peeping through a crack in a shuttered window. He said quickly: Dubey, we should move to some other room. This isn’t at all suitable.

Dubey rapped out an order and the prisoner was led out of the room holding his bleeding cheek. Dubey made a remark as they followed the prisoner out, but the noise had grown so loud that Das could not hear him. What? he shouted.

I said, we’ve got to get him to talk now or … Das strained forward to hear him, but Dubey’s words were lost, for suddenly the noise outside gathered itself together and erupted into a full-throated roar. In the moment’s silence that followed Das heard a thin voice piping: Hul-lo hul-lo, jol-ly fellow. Then another roar, even louder. They could hear the glass rattling in the windows. Quickly they moved into a small windowless room inside.

What are they shouting? Das asked, trying to speak calmly. Dubey did not answer.

Han? Dubey?

I don’t know, Dubey said shortly.

Das thought for a moment. You mean to say, he began. A stone flew through the outer room and rolled down the corridor towards them. Preoccupied, Das picked it up and rubbed it between his hands. You mean to say, he said, that you haven’t passed your departmental language examinations?

There were more shouts outside, and stones clattered on the shuttered windows. Frowning, Das went on: Doesn’t it hold up your salary increments?

It’s much worse, Dubey confided in a rush. Not only are they holding up my increments, now there’s talk of withholding payment into my gratuity and provident funds. It’s terrible — you don’t know. You chaps in your home states are lucky; you don’t know what it’s like for us. (Das flinched as a roar shook the walls.) I’ve got myself a teacher and I’ve tried to learn the bloody lingo, but it’s impossible. You’d never believe the kinds of words these buggers think up.

A constable stood before them, nervously shifting his weight from leg to leg. He looked scared. Saar-ey …, he said.

Dubey went to the prisoner and prodded his chin up with the point of the cane. Look, he said, tell us the truth and you’ll be out of here in ten minutes. We don’t want to keep you — just tell us the truth. Don’t talk, and I’ll see to it that you’re here for ten years. Now, just tell us: where is that man right now? Don’t make me lose my temper.

The man swallowed and brushed a trickle of blood from his cheek. There was a heavy thud on the outer door of the station, and they heard it creak. Dubey ignored it. Looking straight into the prisoner’s eyes, he laid the tip of his cane on the bridge of his nose. Come on, where is he now?

He’s on a boat for al-Ghazira, the prisoner said in halting Hindi. Mariamma. It left two days ago.

In his disappointment Dubey smashed his cane on the floor, so hard that it splintered and broke. Das patted him on the back: Never mind, you’ll get your report anyway. I’ll talk to the DIG.

Dubey ignored him. Glaring, he shouted at the prisoner: Why al-Ghazira?

The prisoner was no longer hanging his head. He was looking straight at Dubey, and there was a faint hint of triumph in the angle of his head. He said nothing.

Dubey shouted again: Why al-Ghazira? Does he have connections there? People who work with him?

The outer door was groaning and creaking ominously now, and the constables were cowering in a corner. The prisoner was still silent. Das tapped Dubey on the shoulder, but his hand was brushed away. Doubling his splintered cane, Dubey held it to the prisoner’s stomach. He drew his arm back: Come on, quickly. Does he have connections there?

Silently the prisoner nodded. Turning to Das, Dubey said sharply: Any more questions? Das shook his head.

Good, said Dubey. He waved to a constable. Let him go after we’ve gone, but keep an eye on him.

In the outer room shards of glass from a broken window-pane crackled under their shoes. Das noticed an orange glow filtering in under the door. He put his eye to a crack in the shutters and looked out. He caught a glimpse of flaming palm-leaf torches and a dense mass of people thronged into the narrow road outside the police station. Then suddenly there was another eye opposite his and a voice was singing: Hul-lo hul-lo, jol-ly fel-low.

Das jumped back. Dubey, he said, maybe you should issue arms to the constables. Dubey nodded and spoke to the Head Constable. They watched the constables filling registers, unlocking the arms cabinet and fingering the rifles inside.

Dubey said: Let’s hope they don’t join the crowd — they haven’t got their dearness allowance for three months.

The Head Constable prised the heavy outer door open and prodded the tip of his ancient rifle through. A hush fell on the crowd. The other constables fanned out behind him and the two officers stepped out.

Their driver had prudently taken their car to a lane a little way off when the crowd had begun to collect. The constables cleared a path for them with jabs of their rifles. Das walked quickly, trying not to notice the angry silence rustling around them and the shuffles and the lunges that were arrested by indecision. He could see no faces, only shadows flickering in the torchlight. He forced his head up and slowed his pace. He sensed running feet behind him, and he felt his muscles stiffen with tension. He looked down without turning his head. It was the same little boy.

They were at the edges of the crowd now. He could feel the tension snapping in the air; he saw feet thrust out, arms drawn back, hesitating, waiting for a lead. Then they were through, climbing into the car, trying not to look back.

Das sank into his seat and breathed deeply. Then he saw the boy’s face again, at the window: Hul-lo hul-lo, jol-ly fel-low. The boy drew his head back, opened his mouth and spat. But Jyoti Das had already managed to wind the window up, and the spit dribbled harmlessly down the glass.

Next moment the car jumped forward and the boy was thrown aside. The crowd roared and surged into the lane, but the car was already picking up speed. They heard two stones strike the roof and roll off clanging loudly. And then they turned a corner and left the crowd far behind them. The gob of spittle was soon blown off the window.

Really, Das said, looking at Dubey, it’s incredible. Something should be done about it — stopping your increments and your gratuity and provident fund instalments! Can’t the Officers’ Association do anything?

Dubey shook his head. He was huddled morosely in a corner. How’s a man to live? he said. At least you people get city-compensatory allowance; in this place we don’t even get that. And it’s not bad enough for a hardship allowance, either.

For a while Dubey stared silently out of the window. Then he clenched his fists and muttered: Someday I’ll clean the place up, really clean it up. Chaos, nothing but bloody chaos. Give me one battalion of the Central Reserve Police, just one, and I’ll clean them up like they’ve never been cleaned up before. They won’t know what hit them. These local constables are no good. They’re paid by those buggers — same lingo, same bloody people … Just one battalion.

He saw Das looking at him and stopped. He drew a deep breath. So, Das! Congratulations!

Congratulations? Das said, bewildered. Why?

On your foreign trip, you fool. Don’t you see? If you give your DIG or whoever the line that the Suspect has joined up with some Middle Eastern terrorist groups or something, they’ll have to send you there to follow up. That’s why I wanted to get that man to confess that the Suspect has connections there — all for your sake. Now you can safely put it in your report. It’s very simple: there are hundreds of terrorist groups and things there and he’s bound to get involved with them. You must follow up that angle and even use a bit of pressure perhaps. And you watch; if you’re sensible, you’ll get a foreign trip. To al-Ghazira. Don’t let them take you off the case now.

Really, Das thought, he’s not at all as stupid as people say. In fact, he’s quite shrewd. He felt a little dizzy; he had never been abroad before. A pleasant thrill of apprehension coursed through him and he shivered.

I wonder what daily allowances and travel allowances the Ministry will give you, Dubey said enviously. Lucky bastard. God, the things you’ll be able to buy! Everything imported.

Jyoti Das did not answer. He was thinking of al-Ghazira. A new sky, a whole new world of birds. Wasn’t al-Ghazira on one of the major migration routes? He would have to do a bit of reading at the National Library. What would the colours be like? he wondered.

That night Dubey took him to dine with the Chief Administrator of Mahé. When they arrived, Jyoti spent a long time marvelling at the house: a great blue mansion, set in a luxuriance of magnolia, hibiscus and frangipani, with a façade draped in tiers of jalousies and wooden shutters. The Administrator, a tall, smiling man, answered Jyoti’s questions with a casual wave — the French built it, their administrator lived here before — he was clearly bored with an explanation too frequently asked for. He led them to a paved terrace behind the house that looked out over the Mahé river and the sea beyond. They drank cold beer and listened to the shouts of fishermen in butterfly-sailed boats wafting in on the sea breeze.

Soon Dubey was very drunk and the Administrator was frowning worriedly. He went into the house, and when he came back he said: Come up, we’ll have dinner now. He tried to hurry them up a wooden staircase to his apartments above, but halfway up Dubey caught Jyoti by the elbow and ran down the stairs, while the Administrator called after them, annoyed. Still holding Jyoti’s arm Dubey led him to a glass-panelled door at the far end of the terrace. Like boys, they cupped their hands and peered through the glass. Jyoti could see nothing, for it was very dark inside. Dubey tried the handle on the door, and it opened, creaking on rusty hinges. Light streamed in from the terrace, and Jyoti saw that they were in a large, high-ceilinged room, divided by fluted columns. Chandeliers covered with grimy sheets of tarpaulin hung from the ceiling. A wall of dust-encrusted mirrors shone dully at the far end of the room. The room hummed with the roaring of the sea outside.

This was the ballroom, said Dubey. He looked about him open-mouthed, his eyes shining with wonder. Jyoti was surprised; he had not thought Dubey capable of wonder.

This is where all those French lords and ladies used to dance, Dubey said. He slid a foot along the wooden floor, leaving a trail in the dust. Then he raised himself on his toes and swung his plump, sleek body around in a drunken pirouette.

Not bad, no? he said. He stopped and stared wistfully out to sea.

Chapter Nine. Becalmed

At dawn on their second day at sea, while two boils quivered ripely on Alu’s left leg, Mariamma’s engine spluttered, broke into a whine, and then coughed sullenly into silence. Sajjan was at the wheel then: a lean, sunken-cheeked boy, not yet sixteen though already stamped with that dour arrogance which sometimes marks the mechanically skilled. Hajji Musa Koya, who usually took the wheel at dawn, was still dozing, propped against the wheelhouse with a sun-bleached blanket draped over his chest. An almost-empty arrack-bottle had been tucked with drunken parsimony into the waist of his lungi.

Sajjan went to the rails, leant over and spat into the sea. For a moment he stood looking down at Hajji Musa’s skullcap and wispy white beard. Then, shaking him by the shoulder, he shouted: Get up, Hajji, get up, up.

Hajji Musa, hovering near wakefulness, snorted into his beard: All right, boy, stop shouting. You know what to do — go and do something.

Sajjan stepped over him and bent down to run his hands over the steel hoop of a hatch. Then, spreading his legs, he took a firm grip on the hoop and pulled. The hatch creaked but would not open. He pulled off his oil-soaked vest and wound it around his hands. Then he spat on the hinges and pulled again, grunting, and now the hatch squeaked open, leaking whiffs of acrid diesel fumes.

Mariamma was not a big boat, and at first glance her unusually broad waist made her seem smaller than her twenty-eight-odd feet. Her hull sat high in the water, squat and ungainly, but strong. She had a low cabin, deep in the waist, and a tiny wheelhouse with barely enough space for two men to squeeze into, set well forward, close to her bows. Fence-like wooden rails, warped by the sea air, ringed her splintering decks. A rusty tube-well, which was sometimes used to pump water out of the bilges, perched on the stern like a heron, with its spout angled sharply over the rails.

In the many long and peaceful years she had spent in Calicut harbour and the backwaters around Alleppey, Mariamma’s prow and the sides of her cabin and wheelhouse had acquired a dense coating of murals — out of the cabin grew emerald palms and houses with banks of crimson tiles; ochre tigers leapt on the wheelhouse; and fiery-eyed silvery fish stared out of the prow into the horizon. When Hajji Musa had decided to turn Mariamma to the lucrative al-Ghazira trade he had had her painted a nondescript bluish grey in the hope that it would make her less visible to coastguards and harbour police. But the contractor had mixed water in the paint and every year splashes of blue-grey flaked off till only a few patches, floating like clouds on the colours beneath, remained.

Hajji Musa had also installed a 400-horsepower diesel engine and he had strengthened Mariamma’s bulkheads so that jerrycans of diesel fuel could be stored below deck. Over very short distances, when, for example, prudence required her to drop quickly below a horizon, Mariamma could do 35 miles per hour and sometimes even 40, but at the cost of a shuddering that threatened to dismember her. At her usual cruising speed of 20 to 25 knots she took the heaviest seas with the placid confidence of a tug in a harbour.

When he first took to the business Hajji Musa had listened carefully to the stories people told up and down the Malabar coast of boats setting off for al-Ghazira with twenty, forty and even (so they said) a hundred eager emigrants, but only to run out of fuel halfway, or else to be swallowed into the sea with the first mild gale, borne down by sheer weight. Unlike many other boat-owners, the Hajji’s cupidity was easy-going, and he had that love of life peculiar to the morose. So he took note of the stories and made a few rules which he never broke — he sailed only in winter, after the retreat of the north-east monsoon when the sea was like a lagoon and he could be sure of a gentle breeze behind him. And he never took more than eight passengers, but he charged them almost three times the going rate. Yet, despite his high rates, he never had any trouble finding passengers, for he had a considerable reputation and people were willing to pay extra to make sure that they were not left stranded on a sandbank at low tide somewhere in the Arabian Sea. His overheads he covered by a little discreet trafficking in the highly priced hashish of the Idikki hills. And he always carried enormous quantities of diesel fuel: apart from the mounds of jerrycans below deck, there were a few drums in the cabin and a couple in the stern which also served to curtain off a plastic slop-bucket.

Alu and the two other male passengers, Rakesh and Professor Samuel, had found themselves a place to sleep not far from the bucket, in the narrow space that was shielded from the wind by the cabin. There they had erected a rain-shelter, a sheet of tarpaulin which was harnessed to the cabin at one end and to the deck-rails at the other. Hajji Musa often looked at the flapping sheet with melancholy misgiving: It’ll overturn the whole boat if it catches a gust. But Rakesh, who was very thin and a little sickly, insisted that they keep it; they had to have something to keep the deadly morning dew from their chests, especially in winter and at sea; there was no telling …

The men were not alarmed when they heard the engine die out: twice before the engine had coughed and spluttered, only to drum back into its regular rhythm moments later. After a while, yawning and stretching, they drifted to the wheelhouse. Hajji Musa was squatting near the open hatch, silently smoking a biri. Sajjan was idly shining a torch down at the engine. It was still dark, though the eastern sky behind them had turned scarlet. The sea, tinged with violet, was lapping gently at Mariamma’s sides.

Alu squatted beside Hajji Musa: What’s happened? Hajji Musa, in his perfunctory Hindi, scratching his skeletal ribs, answered: Don’t know. Let’s see. We’ll have to let it cool before we do anything.

For a while they all looked silently down the hatch. Then, Rakesh, leaning his thin, lanky frame over the rails, began to clean his teeth with a twig of neem. Soon Professor Samuel wandered away towards the cabin. He was a short, stocky man, bespectacled and balding. He folded his lungi up to his waist and climbed down the three steps which led to the cabin. When he reached the curtain which hung across the cabin’s entrance he turned, averting his eyes from the interior with painstaking modesty, and reached inside. He drew out a large pot of tapioca, a bottle of coconut oil and a tin of salt. Then he leapt back up the steps and, squatting in the passageway, began to knead the tapioca with coconut oil and salt.

Suddenly he stopped, cocked his head and beckoned at Alu: It’s her again. A moment later a long, pain-racked groan rasped out of the cabin, shaking the whole boat. The Professor wagged his head: Yes, it’s her again — Karthamma.

They had only had a glimpse of her once, when she clambered on at Mahé: tall and luminously black, heavy with child, her belly straining before her like a full sail. God, said the Professor with his ear to the cabin wall, it’s a strong woman who can groan like that.

At midday when the sea shone like a white light Mariamma was still sitting on the glassy water, rocking in the occasional gusts of wind that gently corrugated the surface. Rakesh, Professor Samuel and Alu soon bored of keeping a look-out for coastguards as Hajji Musa had told them to. Gradually they drifted towards a patch of shade near the cabin. Alu propped himself up against the cabin wall and stretched his legs stiffly ahead of him to dull the pain of his boils. Rakesh and Professor Samuel squeezed in beside him. They could hear Sajjan tinkering with the engine: in that shimmering silence it seemed as though the sound was echoing back at them from the horizon.

Presently Professor Samuel began to talk about queues.

If you want to understand queues — understand them seriously, that is — you have to begin by admitting that you know nothing about them. They aren’t simple things, queues. Whole books have been written about them — in America, in Poland, Japan, Czechoslovakia … People see queues and they think, Why, here’s a simple thing, I’ll just go and join it. But it’s not simple, not at all. They’re there before you see them; they have nothing to do with you. They were there before you came along and they’ll be there after you leave. A queue’s not just one man or two men or ten men standing in a line. Even if those two men or ten men weren’t there you’d still have a queue, stretching away in principle. It’s a thing of the mind, with its own humours and properties.

Squinting short-sightedly at the cabin wall, the Professor chipped away a flake of blue-grey paint to reveal a minute but very detailed elephant standing under a coconut palm: it wasn’t as though he’d sprung from his mother’s womb with all that he knew of queues hanging on him ready-made like a polyester shirt. For that matter, nobody in Tellicherry Science College where he had taught these last eight long years had known anything about queues: nobody had time for anything but government quarters, convents for their children, the price of fish, quarrels in the Municipal Council, who the Sub-Collector was, where he was being transferred, who’s in, who’s out …

It was just pure chance, if there was such a thing. One day, passing through Cochin on his way to the station, he had stopped at a library in a small college; not a big library, but quiet, a nice place to spend an hour. And there it was on an almost-empty statistics shelf, its blue hardboard cover plastered with dust and perforated by weevils. He’d picked it up idly — it hadn’t looked very interesting — The Theory of Markov Processes. And it wasn’t very interesting for the most part; he’d almost put it back on the shelf. But then somehow his thumb had caught on the last chapter — ten sparse pages on the Theory of Queues. That was how it began …

The Professor stiffened and swallowed his sentence. Look! he dug Alu urgently in the ribs. It’s her. It’s her again: Zindi at-Tiffaha.

They saw the back of her head first, wrapped in a yellow scarf. It rose slowly, like a winter sun, above the roof of the cabin. Then, swaying gently, she turned into the passageway. Her head and hands seemed incongruously small now, almost misshapen beside the immense rolling bulk of her body: she looked as though her body had somehow outgrown her extremities. She saw her path blocked by the three men and stopped, arms akimbo, eyes narrowed against the sun. Her face was very dark, but only in patches, as though it had been scorched unevenly by the sun, and it glistened under a sheen of sweat. Her cheeks hung down in heavy, muscular jowls, every fold of them quivering with vitality. In Mahé she had been inexpertly swathed in a sari; now she wore a black dress which enveloped her in a cocoon of cloth, billowing outwards where great quivering breasts rested on her stomach and then ballooning over her massive hips to fall to the ground like a tent, over her feet.

In one hand she held a red folding umbrella printed with flowers. She pointed the umbrella at the men and pressed a knob. It flew open, almost leaping out of her grip, and the men flinched and shrank back. She raised the umbrella and swept past them towards the screen of oil-drums which hid the slop-bucket. They could see the umbrella even after she had disappeared behind the oil-drums; it hung poised above the rim, like a small flowered dome.

Squinting at the umbrella, the Professor leant towards Alu and whispered: Yes, no doubt about it. No doubt about it at all. What they say is true — she’s a madam. It’s stamped on her — you can see it in everything she does. And anyway, if she wasn’t, why would she be herding these poor women across the sea? Why would she be keeping them shut away like prisoners in the cabin? I tell you, she’s going to sell them into slavery in al-Ghazira. Something like that. Or worse.

But they don’t look like prisoners, Rakesh said timidly, smoothing his oil-sleek hair. They seemed quite happy to come on to the boat. Of course we couldn’t see Karthamma properly, but that woman she calls Kulfi — the pale gori one in the white widow’s sari — she sits up front in the evenings and laughs and chats with Hajji Musa. Chunni, too, the other one. They seem quite as happy to be going as us.

Rakesh stopped as a low rumbling groan shook the cabin walls. The Professor cocked his head and nodded in quiet triumph: Yes, you’ll soon see how happy they are. We’ll be hearing more of that soon, much more. I’ll tell you one thing — we’re going to go through hell, stuck here in the middle of the sea with this woman starting her labour.

In the engine compartment below deck Sajjan jerked hard on a cord and twice the engine whirred. Once it beat momentarily into life and then spluttered out again. They heard Hajji Musa quietly urging him to try again.

There was a splash of water behind the oil-drums and then the umbrella rose as Zindi stood to shake her skirts out. She turned and lurched purposefully towards the Professor. Squatting beside him, she stared hard into his face.

You’re good at this, han? she rapped out in fluent guttural Hindi. Good at talking? Talk for hours, talk, talk, no thought for other people’s headaches and worries, just talk, talk, any shit, any filth that comes into your mind? You think we can’t hear you down there?

The Professor edged away. Zindi thrust her face within an inch of his; a black mole with a single hair, twitching like an insect’s antenna, sat on a deep line at the corner of her mouth. All right, she said, we all want to hear some more talk from you now, some real talk. What are you going to do about this boat? Are you going to fiddle with your balls while we die in the middle of the sea or are you going to do something?

Professor Samuel swallowed and shut his eyes.

What can we do? Rakesh appealed to her. You tell us — what can we do? We don’t know anything about engines.

His voiced trailed off. Of course, he said, peering at the horizon, we could row …

Yes, row, said Zindi. That’s the answer. Hang your cocks over the side and twitch hard. That’ll get us to al-Ghazira by sunset.

There was a sudden pounding on the cabin wall. An instant later a half-strangled shriek shook the deck. The pounding grew till Mariamma began to rock, sending circles rippling outwards towards the horizon. Zindi whirled around and rushed down to the cabin. Soon after, the hammering weakened into feeble knocks. I told you, the Professor said with mournful satisfaction. I told you.

Later, when the sun had dipped low in the sky and a cool evening breeze was gently rocking Mariamma, Alu found himself suddenly shaken out of a doze. Professor Samuel was crouching over him. I’m not going to die like this, he said, his voice shaking. I’m not going to die floating on a boat in the middle of the sea. We have to do something. It’s our duty towards those poor women. Get up. How can you sleep now? Get up. We have to do something.

Alu heaved himself up and limped over to the wheelhouse with the Professor following close behind. Hajji Musa was sitting in the shade of the wheelhouse, holding up a filter while Sajjan polished it with a rag. They were surrounded by grimy bits of machinery.

How much longer, Hajji? Alu said.

The Hajji shrugged and thrust an open palm at the heavens: Who knows?

Criminals, villains, the Professor muttered into Alu’s ear in English. Bringing helpless men and women out to die like animals on the sea. Why is the government not doing something?

Alu picked up a bit of wire and a file and hobbled back to his place in the waist of the boat. He wound the wire around his fingers and began to file one end.

What are you doing? the Professor said, watching him, his eyes wide behind his round spectacles.

Making a hook to fish with, said Alu.

But why?

Why? Alu looked at him in surprise. What else is there to do?

You’re going to make a hook while we die slowly of—

He was cut short by a great ringing crash. What’s the matter? he cried, clutching at the rails. What’s happened?

It rang out again: a harsh, metallic sound as though one of the oil-drums in the cabin had been hit, gong-like. They heard a torrent of hoarse, choking speech, and a moment later Zindi’s voice, shouting confused, breathless orders: Hold her legs. Don’t let her kick. Why’re you holding her like that? Do you think she’s a horse or what? Then the cabin erupted again; there was another crash and another burst of hoarse, strangled speech. The men had all gathered around the steps now. They heard Zindi’s voice again, pleading.

In the lull that followed a woman in a white sari pushed the curtain aside and stumbled out. What’s happening, Kulfi-didi? Rakesh cried. Is she in labour?

Kulfi-didi wiped her face with the end of her sari. She was a slight, fragile woman with long, slender arms and a thin, hollowed-out face. Her cheeks looked as though they had collapsed, like the skin of a punctured drum. Grey smudges surrounded her eyes, spilling out, mask-like, towards her temples. She had taken her name from her complexion, which was pale, slightly yellow and grainily coarse. Her age seemed oddly indeterminate, for with her worn face and haggard cheeks she combined an incongruously girlish manner. Now, red-eyed and sweating, she stood panting at the entrance to the cabin. Her hair hung around her head in damp, stringy knots and her white sari was streaked with blood. She thrust a mug at Rakesh: Water, quickly.

Rakesh ran to the side, threw himself flat on the deck and reached down to fill the mug. Has it started? he asked, handing it back to her. Is she delivering now?

Rolling her eyes, Kulfi said: Yes. No, it’s her time but she won’t … She won’t let the labour start. She’s sitting on the floor and kicking and fighting. She’s stuffed her hands into her womb, right in, up to her wrists. Maybe she’s trying to kill it. She keeps saying things in her language …

Like lead grating on a slate, hysteria shrilled through her voice. Then Zindi stepped out and pushed her back into the cabin. Her scarf had slipped off and her coarse greying hair lay matted on her forehead. She spotted Professor Samuel. Hey, you, she said, beckoning with a finger. You know Malayalam, han? Come into the cabin and tell us what she’s trying to say.

There was a silence. Then Professor Samuel said with quiet dignity: You know that is not possible. I cannot go into the cabin with her in a state like that. It won’t be right, it won’t be—

He stopped, mouth open, searching for the Hindi word he wanted.

The blood rushed into Zindi’s eyes. Arsehole, sala, she shouted. You come here quick right now, or I’ll break your legs.

All right, all right — the Professor held up his hands — but I won’t go in. I’ll stand with my back to the curtain.

He climbed carefully down the steps to the cabin. When he reached the last step he turned to face the wheelhouse and edged backwards towards the cabin. Catching the curtain with both hands, he held it to his cheek so that his ears were inside the cabin but his face outside.

There was another outburst behind the curtain. The Professor stiffened, frowning in concentration. His lips moved silently as the hoarse voice muttered on. At length he said: She says she won’t deliver without signing the right forms. That’s what she says. She says she’ll keep it in for as long as she has to.

Are you mad? Zindi shouted at the Professor. Are you lying, you bastard? What form? Where form? Do you think this is a passport office?

The Professor silenced Zindi with a gesture. Cocking his head, he listened intently to the whimpering inside until it had sunk into exhausted gasps. He looked up then, and shifted his eyes uneasily from Zindi to Alu. She’s delirious, I think, he said. It was madness to bring her on to a boat in this state. She’s just babbling, on and on. She says that she knows that the child won’t be given a house or a car or anything at all if she doesn’t sign the forms. It’ll be sent back to India, she says, and she would rather kill it than allow that to happen; kill it right now with a bottle while it’s still in her womb.

Zindi pushed him aside and vanished into the cabin. They heard her growling in a soothing whisper and soon Karthamma’s murmurs faltered and died.

After nightfall, sitting around the deck, they ate a silent meal of rice, fish-paste and pickle off tin plates — all of them except Hajji Musa and Sajjan, who were still cleaning bits of machinery. Zindi sat cross-legged, enveloped in a black, cloak-like tarha. Beside her was Chunni Devi, a dark, taciturn, square-faced woman, dressed in a yellow kurta and green bell-bottomed trousers.

Presently Kulfi-didi broke the silence. What I can’t understand, she said thoughtfully, licking a grain of rice off her fingers, what I can’t understand is how she got these ideas. Kahan se? She’s so uneducated she doesn’t even know when a baby’s been stuck inside her, but she still wants to sign forms. It’s not like she’s from Bangalore or some big city or something. You can tell as soon as you see her that she does eight-anna jobs in ricefields and things like that. And here she is, convinced that if she signs a form her baby will get cars and houses and all that. Where do these villagers get these ideas?

Maybe, Rakesh said, looking at his plate, maybe she wants a birth certificate. You really need a birth certificate nowadays: can’t get into school without one; can’t get a job, can’t get a bus-pass, nothing …

You’re wrong, the Professor said sharply. What she wanted is quite clear. Someone’s brought her on to the boat by making all kinds of promises — your child will be this, it’ll be that, it’ll have houses and cars and multi-storeyed buildings if only you can get across to al-Ghazira. Sign a few forms and the child will be a Ghaziri. In her state the poor woman believed what she was told. Now her time has come and she wants those forms.

The Professor stared hard at Zindi: Someone here has done something sinful to that woman; someone with no conscience.

Zindi pushed herself slowly upright and emptied the remains of her rice into the sea. Quietly, speaking to no one in particular, she said: Karthamma came to me herself in Mahé. She had heard of me from someone or the other. I didn’t have to tell her anything — she had already heard more stories about al-Ghazira than I could make up in a year. She begged me, she even offered me money, to take her away from your India.

She glanced around the deck. Nobody met her eyes. She clasped her flapping tarha tightly around her and vanished into the cabin.

An hour later there was a rattle below deck as Sajjan cranked the engine. It pattered irregularly for a moment and then the beat caught and held. The engine roared and Mariamma surged ponderously forward. There was a burst of cheers; Zindi and Kulfi-didi rushed out of the cabin, and Professor Samuel ran into the wheelhouse and thumped Hajji Musa on his back.

In answer, Hajji Musa merely smiled, baring his grey gums, and looked ahead at the moonlit sea.

Late on the fourth day Alu finished filing his bit of wire to a point. He had worked on it for hours every day, to distract himself from the racking pain of his boils. Next morning he set about making a line. First he gathered together all the rags he could find and unravelled them. Then he twisted the bits of string together, into three separate lengths of yarn to begin with, and then into a three-stranded cord.

Rakesh and Professor Samuel sat beside him and watched. There was nothing else to do. The sea was glassily empty. Sajjan and Hajji Musa ran Mariamma in uncommunicative silence, brusquely refusing all offers of help. The cabin had fallen eerily silent ever since the second day. One evening Kulfi-didi had confided that she could hardly tell any longer whether Karthamma was dead or alive — she just lay there, barely breathing, and yet, incredibly, the child still seemed to be growing within her.

Early on the sixth day Alu’s line was finally ready. He bent his bit of wire to form an eye at one end and a serviceable hook at the other, threaded the line through the eye and baited it with a lump of tapioca. Rakesh and Professor Samuel gathered around to watch as he prepared to make his first cast.

Just then Zindi emerged from the cabin, umbrella in hand, on her way to the bucket in the stern. She shot her umbrella open as soon as she stepped on to the deck and looked around, her eyes narrowed against the glare of the midday sun. She saw the men gathered in a knot near the bows, chattering excitedly. For a moment she thought of ignoring them, but then curiosity got the better of her and she shuffled forward, rolling her immense bulk with the pitching of the boat.

What’s happening? she said, leaning over the rails to look. Before they could answer, a gust of wind snatched at her umbrella, bending the ribs backwards. She tried to snap it shut, but another gust caught it, tore it from her grip and carried it over the side.

Do something! she appealed to Rakesh and Professor Samuel.

They shrugged in silent amusement and shook their heads: What can we do?

Then she saw that Alu had already jerked his line out of the water and cast it after the upturned umbrella. That’s right, she cried, thumping him on the back. Catch it like a fish.

The umbrella spun as the hook slid over its rim and then swirled away on Mariamma’s bow wave. Alu pulled himself upright and limped quickly to the stern. Throwing himself flat on the deck, he waited for the bobbing umbrella with the line ready in his hands. As the spinning patch of red nylon floated alongside he cast the line. The hook caught in one of the umbrella’s ribs and it checked for an instant. Alu’s hand flashed out and he caught the crook and fished it out of the water.

Shaking the water off it, Alu handed the umbrella back to Zindi. She took it and nodded, scratching her mole. I’ll remember this, she said, and plodded off towards the stern.

Late that night Alu was sitting alone in the waist, trying to hold his throbbing leg still against the boat’s pitching, when he felt the deck creak. He turned and saw Zindi lumbering down the passageway. For a while she stood braced against the rails and watched his huge, lumpy potato head in silence. Then, lowering herself to the deck, she whispered hoarsely: Hey, you, boy. What are you going to do in al-Ghazira?

Alu didn’t answer. She raised her voice: You’re a babu-type, no? You can read and write and everything?

Alu nodded.

That won’t help you, she said. Not if you haven’t got any friends there. What are you going there for?

I’m going to buy a sewing machine, Alu said.

Oh! Zindi scratched her mole. A sewing machine? That’s odd. But you’ll need a job first. It’s not easy to find a job there if you’re on your own. Don’t think you’ll find people pissing money there. There are hundreds, thousands of chhokren like you, begging; begging for jobs.

She prodded his shoulder: Why don’t you talk? Why do you limp like that, with your leg stuck out like a telephone pole?

Alu said: I have boils, here, look. Zindi pushed his pajamas up to his knees and examined his legs. She pressed one of the boils with her thumbs and he recoiled in pain. Zindi rose. Wait, she said, I’ve got something.

She fetched a small glass bottle from the cabin. Just hot coconut oil, she said. It might help and it won’t do any harm. She rubbed the oil on the boils while Alu bit his lip and gripped the rails. How does it feel? she asked, and when he didn’t answer she shouted suddenly, her mouth inches from his ear: Why don’t you talk? Has anyone stuffed your mouth? What’s that man Samuel been telling you?

She caught his elbow: You shut your ears to all the shit and filth these people tell you, do you understand me? All that dirt is in their own minds. You listen to me and I’ll tell you the truth. What I have in al-Ghazira is a kind of boarding house. Also a little tea-shop. Everybody knows it; in those parts Zindi the Apple’s house is famous. You’ll find out; everywhere you go you’ll hear people saying: Beyt Zindi, beyt Zindi. People crowd to my house; boys like you offer money to be taken in. They know I know people and there’s no end to the jobs you can get in al-Ghazira if you know people — in construction, sewage and drainage (though that’s bad work even if it pays well), sweeping, gardening, even shop work. Oil work’s difficult, for they usually find their own people. Still, I can find any man a good job. And, as for women, why, when I go to India I don’t have to do anything. These women find me and come running: Take me, Zindi — no, me, Zindi-didi — don’t take her, she’s got lice. They go on like that. But I don’t take them all. I take only the good girls — clean, polite, hard-working. That’s why I have to go to India myself to look. I find them jobs and they pay me a little, not much, something reasonable. The whole of al-Ghazira knows Zindi’s girls are reliable and hard-working; everyone comes to me and I say, Ya Shaikha, you know my girls, they have to get a little extra, and they say, Yes, yes, Zindi, they’ll get whatever you ask for. And so I get a little extra, too, not much. It’s not a business; it’s my family, my aila, my own house, and I look after them, all the boys and girls, and no one’s unhappy and they all love me.

That’s enough of all that. Now, listen: I’ll give you a chance because you’re a helpful kind of turd and one look at your face and I can see that on your own you’ll be crushed like dung at a crossroads within one week in al-Ghazira. And wallahi I don’t want your death on my soul. So listen: I’ll give you a place and I’ll find you work — something good in construction, maybe even in a shop since you’re lettered, but only maybe, for shop jobs aren’t easy to get. You’ll see, you won’t have to pay much, just a little. You’ll have plenty to send back home. You’re so lucky you won’t believe it when you get to al-Ghazira. What do you say, then, han?

Alu rubbed his leg in silence. Zindi said again, sharply: So what do you say?

Kya pata? Alu said. I don’t know …

Zindi looked hard into his face. Then she pushed herself up, spat into her hands and rubbed them together. You don’t know, she said, turning towards the cabin. You don’t know. But you’ll find out. Just wait till you get there.

Later that night Alu’s boils burst. The pain oozed away with the bloody pus and he slept soundly for the first time in their six days at sea.

With his first cast next morning Alu felt a jerk on his line. It snapped taut and sang through the water for a second. Then suddenly it was limp again. He pulled the line in and found that the tapioca had been taken neatly off the hook.

Rakesh, watching him, nodded slowly. That’s what it’s like, he said. The fish get away if you wait for them. You have to go out and get them.

Alu baited his hook and tossed it out again. He and Professor Samuel leant drowsily on the rails and watched the line cutting through the water. It was warm and very bright and the spindrift prickled coolly on their faces. Then Rakesh began to talk. That was unusual, for Rakesh rarely talked; he found so much occupation in his own appearance that speech was usually unnecessary to him as either expression or diversion.

Till about a month before he found himself in Mariamma Rakesh was a travelling salesman for a small Ayurvedic pharmacy in Bhopal which specialized in a patented herbal laxative. It was the only job he had been able to find — despite his bachelor’s degree in commerce — and that, too, only after a year’s efforts. So he worked at it hard, though it was tedious and very frustrating.

The trouble really lay in the product. It was soon clear that people no longer wanted Ayurvedic laxatives. There was no market for black viscous liquids in old rum-bottles; they wanted sparkling, bubbling salts which dissolved in water, or milky syrups in bottles with bright labels. They wanted advertisements and slogans which promised more than mere movement — promotions and success at work, marital triumphs, and refrigerators in their dowries. Regularity, balance and inner peace no longer sold.

After he had been working there for close on six months there came a particularly heart-breaking day in a small town south of Bhopal: not one of the town’s four pharmacies agreed to stock so much as half a bottle of his wares. He had nothing else to do, so he wandered down the narrow bazaar, kicking at the grimy dust, towards the ghats on the river. And then, passing the opening of a narrow lane, he heard the unmistakable throbbing of Mere Sapnon ki Rani spilling out.

For a while he stood there transfixed, overwhelmed by reminiscence. The song was from the first film he had ever seen — he and a cousin had stolen out of his aunt’s house in Indore, where his mother had taken him to visit her sister. Despite the thrashing afterwards, the magic of that burning July afternoon had stayed mirror-clear in his memory; even years later when he was seeing three or four films a week.

There was nothing he could do about it: the song led him in as though it were a rope around his wrists.

He found himself in a sweetshop, a large hive of a room, all brightly tiled and calendared. A young man in a striped shirt sat, legs folded, behind a steel box, taking in money. Rakesh could tell at once that the shirt was of the finest terry cotton; he noted the gold chain that hung around his neck; envied the easy-going stylishness of his curling, oiled sidelocks. On the wall behind the young man, just beneath a small earthen figure of the Devi Lakshmi, hung a gigantic, pulsating cassette recorder.

Rakesh ate two gulab-jamuns and three samosas. When he went up to the counter to pay, the young man expertly shot back his cuffs and pressed a series of minuscule knobs on his watch with the tip of a pencil. An answer flashed on to the dial. One rupee forty-five, he said.

It took Rakesh an age to pay. Then he could no longer contain himself. Boss, he burst out, how? How did you do it? How did you get all this, boss?

In al-Ghazira, boss, said the young man. Two years and the grace of Lakshmi Devi … He pressed another knob and the watch shrilled out a tune.

Later, after an hour of questions, Rakesh walked down to the ghats and, unmindful of fish and pilgrims alike, threw his bottles of laxative into the Narmada. Within a month, his share of his father’s land sold to a brother, savings collected, Rakesh was in Mahé …

The Professor yawned and blew his nose into the sea. What Rakesh had to say bored him — he had so many untold stories of his own left to tell — but he would never have said so. It was the first time he had heard Rakesh say anything more than a few words and he had said it with so much earnestness that it had seemed as though an interruption would wound him into ages of silence. So he nodded politely and said: And then …?

Rakesh shook his head and shrugged: That’s all. The Professor’s eyes lit up: he saw his chance and quickly cleared his throat. But before he could begin the sea had robbed him of his moment. A sleek black hump curled through the water right in front of them and was lost again before they could be sure they had seen anything at all. And then five, ten, twenty finned backs appeared all at once, weaving through the water with such fluency that they could hardly be told apart from the waves. One leapt out of the water, a grinning bottle-nosed dolphin, and with a single blow of its flukes sent a wave splashing over Mariamma’s deck. Then the huge smiling creatures were all around them, riding Mariamma’s bow wave, nudging each other out in turn while the others leapt and rolled nearby, flashing their white undersides. They all rushed to the side and laughed and shouted till Mariamma yawed and rolled and Hajji Musa had to call out to them not to crowd to one side. Then suddenly, as if to a signal, the sea emptied again and Professor Samuel was left brimful of untold stories and no audience.

But later that night he had his chance again.

An hour or so after their evening meal the Professor heard the quick patter of footsteps near the cabin. He was just in time to see Chunni lean out over the side and empty her stomach into the sea. After a minute-long bout of retching she leant back against the cabin and covered her face with her hands. Slowly, with growing dismay, he realized that she was sobbing.

Yes, Miss Chunni? he said, standing well back from her. Is there anything I can do? Any help …?

How much longer, she whispered, her face still covered with her hands, how much longer will this go on? Are we ever going to get there? Where is he taking us?

Then her chest heaved spasmodically and she had to rush to the rails and lean out again.

Water, water, Professor Samuel muttered to himself. I’ll get some water.

By the time he was back she had collapsed on to the deck with her head on her knees. Here, he said, thrusting the jerrycan at her. Here’s some nice, clean, fresh water.

She made no move. He tapped her uncertainly on the shoulder. Miss Chunni …

He heard her choke back a sob. You need water, Miss Chunni, he said softly. That’s all. He poured a little into his hand and splashed it gently on her face.

She took the jerrycan from him then and washed her face and sat down again beside him, shivering and hiccuping. Koi baat nahin, he said. It’s all right now. And soon he was talking to her in a gentle, quiet monotone, soothing her with the theory of queues.

Much later, long after he had told her about his researches and his tabulations and all his newly minted formulae — the formulae that were to solve the queuing problems of every busy bus-stand and ration-shop and sari-bazaar and obstetrician’s clinic (especially the last; for, make no mistake, there’s no queue longer than that which winds theoretically away from every obstetrician’s door — an unending line stretching into dim infinity, of Teeming Millions waiting to be born) in all of Tellicherry and Cannanore — he looked down at Chunni and saw that she was asleep.

Miss Chunni, he whispered sadly, you’ve been …?

No, she whispered back, I’m listening. Go on.

And do you know, Miss Chunni, he said, none of them would have anything to do with me? I took them plans which would have revolutionized their entire selling strategy, and they wouldn’t even listen to me long enough to laugh. When I took my brand-new counter design to the Dreamland Saree Centre they threw me and the blueprint …

He looked down at her again and this time there could be no doubt that she was soundly asleep. For a long minute he looked into her dark, pitted face and then with the languor of a sleepwalker he raised a finger and touched her on the lips. The sensation went through him like a shock. He snatched his hand back, leapt to his feet and wandered confusedly back to the tarpaulin shelter near the stern.

When they awoke next morning an oil-tanker lay before them. It was so vast it seemed to straddle half the horizon. Mariamma passed so close to it they could see clearly the cross-hatching of pipes and turrets on its deck. It seemed to take an age before they had sailed its length. Its wake was like a gorge swinging through the sea, and when it struck Mariamma the boat almost stood on its stern. They saw a couple of other tankers that day and a few smaller ships, too, mainly freighters and ancient tramps wheezing columns of smoke. In the evening Chunni, sitting with Professor Samuel in the stern, saw birds and pointed them out. When the Professor told Hajji Musa about them the Hajji nodded. Yes, he said, it’s the ninth day. We’ll be in al-Ghazira soon. To celebrate they cooked the one fish that had somehow entangled its gills in Alu’s line.

Late that night Karthamma’s groans started again. By sunrise the cabin was shivering to her screams. The men sat on the steps and stared at the curtain; they could only guess at what was happening inside. They heard a fist pounding on the cabin wall, and Zindi shouting curses. At times the oil-drums rang out as though someone had been thrown against them; at others, eerily, the noise stopped and torrents of words came pouring out of the cabin. In those pauses the Professor would lean forward and listen intently. Once he nodded at the others and said: It’s those forms again. She wants them right now, God help her.

At that Rakesh, who was combing his hair distractedly, rose and fetched a bucket of water. We have to do something, he said helplessly.

A moment later Zindi’s huge bulk stumbled backwards through the curtains and collapsed on to the steps. She sat huddled forward, bent almost double, trying to catch her breath. She saw the others watching her and threw up her hands. What can I do? she said, her voice cracking with exhaustion. The mad bitch is going to kill it and herself, too. It’s all we can do to keep her hands from her womb, and how long can we go on?

She looked hopelessly at the Professor: Can’t you do something?

Professor Samuel took off his spectacles and polished them on his vest, lips pursed. Then, squinting thoughtfully at the cabin, he said: Yes, I think there is something we can do.

She jumped to her feet: What? What will you do?

Wait, he said, fitting his spectacles on again. You’ll see. He turned to Alu: Have you got any paper? Printed paper — paper with fine, close print on it?

Alu nodded. The Professor slapped him on the back. Come on, then. They hurried back to the stern, and Professor Samuel threw aside the tarpaulin sheet that covered their bundles and pulled out his tin suitcase. With deft, controlled haste he unlocked his tin suitcase and took out a pair of trousers, a tie and a black cotton jacket. Dropping his lungi he stepped into his trousers, pulled the jacket on over his vest and wound the tie quickly around his neck. Alu, he shouted, get me the paper, quick.

Untying his bundle of clothes Alu took out the copy of the Life of Pasteur that Gopal had given him and very carefully tore off a page. Despite its age the paper was stiff and crisp. The Professor snatched it from him and, taking a pen out of his jacket, drew a straight line at the bottom of the page. Beside it he wrote in English: ‘Signed.’

You think it’ll work? Alu asked. Oh, yes, said the Professor, she’s in no state to tell the difference between a form given to her by a government babu and a sheet of paper held under her nose by a suited-booted stranger …

He broke off in dismay, looking down at his bare feet. No shoes, he muttered. No shoes.

She won’t look at your feet, Alu said.

Let us hope so, the Professor said, and straightening his jacket he hurried forward to the cabin. At the curtain he stopped and looked back at Alu and Rakesh. Alu waved him on. Looking studiedly downwards, Professor Samuel stepped into the cabin.

They heard him talking rapidly to Zindi. Then his voice changed, rose into a high official monotone and they couldn’t understand him any longer. They heard gasps and a long rattling sigh and after that silence, and then a scream, but of a kind very different from that to which they had grown accustomed: the full, disbelieving cry of a woman in labour.

The Professor stumbled out of the cabin and sat on the steps looking blankly at his feet. Alu prised the sheet of paper out of his fingers. Three shaky Malayalam characters were sprawled across the paper. He rolled the page into a ball and tossed it over the side.

Later, after the bustle and the cries in the cabin had ceased, Zindi came smiling up to the deck. She had a baby cradled in her arms. They all crowded around her to look. It was a boy, very small and wrinkled, dark like his mother and still slimy with her blood. His umbilical cord lay curled on his stomach.

Karthamma still hasn’t seen him, Zindi said. She’s fast asleep. Her face creased into a smile as she looked at Professor Samuel: Maybe she’ll beat you up once she knows what you did.

Kulfi-didi brought warm water and they washed the child and laughed at his shrill, resentful screams. Zindi swaddled it in her tarha and hugged the bundle to her breast and kissed it. My eyes, she said, he will be like my own two eyes to me.

Hajji Musa, standing beside her, tickled the child’s chin and said: It’s a fine boy and where could it grow up better than in the house of Zindi the Apple?

Then it was Rakesh’s turn. He raised his hand to tickle it but his courage ebbed away at the last moment and he dropped his hand and stood staring, shaking his head. Boss, he said in wonder, boss …

And so the child was given his name.

That night, while the others were crowding into the bows in their eagerness to get their first glimpse of al-Ghazira, Alu was sitting alone in the stern, trailing his line, savouring the silence, when he saw Zindi weaving her way down the passage towards him. With a long sigh she settled herself beside him. I’m tired, she said. God give me strength. She had changed into a fresh black fustan and tied a new scarf around her head.

She sighed again and patted his hand. Do you know now? she asked. Are you going to come to my house in al-Ghazira?

I can’t tell yet. Alu’s reply was barely audible. I’ll have to wait and see.

Bring the others if you like — Rakesh and Samuel. They’re all right, and it so happens that for once I have room now.

She peered closely at him: Well?

Alu shrugged: I don’t know …

Zindi sat absolutely still for a moment looking at his lumpy, swollen potato face. Then she hammered her fist on the deck. Idon’knowyet Idon’knowyet, she mimicked him. What do you know? Do you know anything at all?

Alu rose quickly to his feet but she shot out a hand and pulled him down again. He jerked his leg back but her fist had closed on it like a clamp. Pulling himself up again he braced himself against the rails and tried to kick his leg free.

Zindi smiled at him, immense and immovable. Why so shy? she said. Where can you run to?

Then in one quick movement she pulled him down and planted a hand in his crotch. She laughed, and he could feel her breath hot on his cheek. Now, she said, let’s see if you know about anything at all.

She tore open the knot in his pajamas and pushed them down to his knees. Good, she whispered in his ear, so there is something you know. With a flick of her wrists she flung her skirts back over her waist, baring a dark, surging pile of a belly and trunk-like thighs. She took hold of the small of his back and with one powerful heave of her shoulders, pulled him astride her.

So that was how Alu first saw the lights of al-Ghazira peering over Zindi’s shoulder, half-smothered by her breasts, her gasps loud in his ears. He gazed at the distant pinpricks of light and his dazzled sight meshed with every other sense in his body till the lights grew and clamoured and burnt like suns, swallowing the voices suddenly risen around him: Professor Samuel in some distant part of the boat, voice high with excitement — You see, Chunni, I only realized too late that it was I who was wrong, not the shopkeepers, not the obstetricians, but I; and then Zindi spent and fighting for her wind — Never again, don’t dare, don’t dare try this again, don’t even dare look at me again; and somewhere else — Do you understand that, Chunni? I was wrong because there aren’t any queues there, it’s near those lights that the queues are, because there aren’t any queues without money; and Zindi’s hot breath again — And don’t ever talk about this in al-Ghazira, not if you want to live, for if Abu Fahl even imagines this, even dreams of it, you’ll be holding bricks together till the Judgement for he’ll cut you into pieces and feed you into a cement-grinder; and still the lights grew, and it did not matter whether they burnt in al-Ghazira or the moon, any more than it matters to an insect whether a fire burns in a lamp or a furnace, for through a century and a half the same lights have shone in one part of the globe or another, wherever money and its attendant arms have chosen to descend on peoples unprepared for its onslaughts, and for all of those hundred and fifty years Mariamma’s avatars have left that coast for those lights carrying with them an immense cargo of wanderers seeking their own destruction in giving flesh to the whims of capital.