The shutters were falling on the shopfronts.
Across Metiabruz, fear infused the air as word spread that trouble was coming. In the Hindu heartlands to the north, smoke, soot-black and charred, was already rising, ominous as an approaching storm.
This road, when I had passed along it the previous day, had been vibrant with the colours of the bazaar: the reds and emerald greens of the vegetable market, the silver of the fish and the entreaties of the stallholders. Now the market was dead, the stalls reduced to skeletons of bamboo and canvas, shorn of produce or patrons.
I wondered if the people here knew what had occurred. How did they know to batten down the hatches? Was it sixth sense or perhaps collective memory? Did smoke rising in the north necessarily portend to violence heading south? I wondered how many of them even knew who Mukherjee was, and why his death should trigger a saffron-clad cataclysm. Or did they consider it just another act of God, as inexplicable as a flood or a plague of locusts?
I ordered the tonga-wallah to halt so that I might purchase a newspaper – a Bangla paper – the only kind on sale here, from an old man who was hurriedly locking up the box, no more than a few feet high and wide in which he sat, cross-legged, for twelve hours a day. He seemed bemused that anyone should seek to buy a newspaper when the news itself was would soon fall upon us.
The front page carried news of Mukherjee’s demise and declared the circumstances ‘suspicious’. The language was inflammatory – quite literally, in that it noted the fire at the house he was found in. There was scant mention of suspects, but the claim of arson, perpetrated by those opposed to the man’s views, was clear. And while blame was apportioned obliquely rather than squarely, it left its readership in no doubt that the finger of accusation was pointed at the door of the Muslims. I felt nauseous, as though I’d been kicked in the stomach. My attempt to mask the killing – an act committed in desperation and a heartfelt desire to avoid a bloodbath – had not just failed, but was now being co-opted into the very narrative of hatred which I had sought to derail.
I should have known better. People always fit the facts to suit their own agenda. My actions had done nothing to prevent communal violence, merely changed the perceived means of murder from a strangulation to arson. And for that I had put my own head in a noose.
I returned to the tonga and once more continued the journey down the road, through the Islamic arch, to the mansions by the Hooghly where I had met the woman playing the santoor and where Gulmohamed was supposed to be staying. Once more I walked up the gravel path. This time there was no music. Indeed there was no sound of any kind. Even the birds in the trees had fallen silent.
I walked up the steps, past stone balustrades intricately carved into geometric patterns which cast a latticework of shadows on the ground. The veranda was empty, its rattan chairs and table abandoned like the deck of a ghost ship. The solid double door was shut fast, barred from the inside. I tugged at the bell-pull and waited.
The air broiled and minutes passed; enough time for me to take stock of my pitiable situation. I had attempted to save lives, to avert a calamity, and because of that, I was now a fugitive, on the run from my colleagues and a hangman’s noose. I remembered my thoughts from the previous time I had stood here. I had stared at Gulmohamed’s niece and cautioned myself against any romantic flights of fancy. Well, that would not be necessary now, or ever again. My life as I had known it was finished. My career was over, and with it had gone any hopes of a suitable marriage and all the other trappings, large and petty, which marked out the position and progress of the bhadralok through life. There was no way back. Salvation, if there was any to be had, lay in moving forward, and following matters to their bitter conclusion.
From above came the metallic creak of an unoiled hinge and the thump of a wooden shutter striking the wall.
‘Ké?’ The voice was female.
I stepped back off the veranda in order to make myself visible. A maid looked out from between the bars of a first-floor window.
‘Kee chow?’ she asked angrily.
I sensed fear in her voice; apprehension masked with aggression. As a policeman my instinct was to take advantage of that fear, threaten her with the direst of consequences if she failed to comply with my instructions. But that was not possible now. I could not tell her I was a policeman, indeed I could not be sure that I still was one, and I feared that threats might only make matters worse. The circumstances dictated delicacy.
‘Didi,’ I said, ‘ami Gulmohamed sahiber sandhān kōrchee. Bapār-ta khoobi dorkāree.’ I told her I was looking for Gulmohamed, impressed upon her the urgency.
She turned from the window and exchanged whispered words with someone veiled by the shadows.
‘Darao,’ she said, returning to the window. Wait there.
I did as she commanded, walked back to the door and waited. From inside came the scrape of a beam being lifted and a chain being loosened.
The door opened and before me stood not the maidservant but the woman who’d earlier mesmerised me with her playing of the santoor, Gulmohamed’s niece.
‘So,’ she said, ‘Mr Union of Islam. You’ve returned.’
‘That’s correct, memsahib.’
‘What happened to your face?’
Instinctively I reached for the bruises.
‘I had some trouble with the dadas of a certain pārā.’
‘You were attacked?’
‘We had a disagreement,’ I conceded. ‘Please, it is imperative that I speak with your uncle. He is here?’
She looked at me the way another woman might examine a new sari in a textile shop, as though assessing whether I was worth more of her time and attention. ‘Imperative? Well, in that case you’d better come in.’
I smiled gratefully, removed the cap from my head and followed her inside.
The house was decorated, if not like a Mogul’s palace, then at least like his hunting lodge. On the walls, portraits of bejewelled princes jockeyed for position with sepia-hued photographs of moon-faced maharanis with the eyes of temptresses.
She led me through to the drawing room with Mogul miniatures on the mantel and a tired-looking tiger-skin on the floor. In the centre were two fading, brocaded sofas. I had hoped to find Gulmohamed seated there but the room was empty. The woman directed me to one of the sofas while she took a seat on the other. I did as directed, avoiding standing on the skin of the poor tiger, whose head still remained attached, jaws open in a final, silent snarl.
She pressed a brass button in the wall beside her. The door opened and I turned as the maid entered, head bowed.
‘Tea?’ asked the woman.
Was it normal in Muslim circles to offer tea to a lowly messenger?
I declined. ‘I simply need to speak to your uncle.’
‘Of course,’ she said with a nod, but there was something in the manner of it, something which felt disturbing. She turned to the maid. ‘Jao.’
The servant left silently, closing the door behind her.
‘Will Mr Gulmohamed be long?’
She smiled. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask your name.’
‘My name?’ I stammered. I hadn’t thought to give myself a name. ‘Asif,’ I mumbled. It was the first one to pop into my head. ‘Asif Khan.’
‘You are from Calcutta?’
‘No, memsahib. From Dhaka.’
She leaned forward. ‘Really? I have family in Dhaka. Perhaps we are neighbours?’
A family of her wealth and standing would never live in the same neighbourhood as the family of the poor boy I was claiming to be. She was toying with me. I just didn’t know why.
I smiled like a fool and shook my head. ‘Nā, memsahib. I don’t think so.’
‘Where in Dhaka does your family live?’ she continued.
‘Why do you ask?’
It was her turn to smile. ‘I want to know in which school in Dhaka you learned an English word like imperative.’
I cursed myself for my stupidity. The word imperative would not feature in a poor boy’s lexicon. For that matter, neither would the word lexicon.
‘Why don’t you tell me who you really are.’
I thought it over for a moment and decided I had precious little to lose by telling her the truth. She would find out soon enough anyway given I was here to arrest her uncle.
‘I’m from the police,’ I said.
Her eyes opened wide. ‘A spy?’
‘A detective.’
‘You don’t look very much like a detective.’
‘It has been a difficult few days.’
‘That much is clear,’ she said, gesturing to my blackened eye. ‘And you have identification?’
I reached into my pocket and realised that my papers were still sitting in the safe in Budge Budge thana.
‘Not upon me,’ I said. ‘I have been working undercover. I must speak to your uncle now. Or people across this city are going to die.’
A shadow fell across her face; an errant cloud venturing before the sun.
‘You’re trying to frighten me?’
I shook my head. ‘I wish that were so, but it’s not. Now, miss, if you would rather not be arrested, please tell me what I need to know. Where is your uncle?’
‘I don’t know.’
I was not sure whether to believe her.
‘Please tell me the truth. North Calcutta is already burning and unless I can find your uncle, things may get a lot worse.’
‘He’s not here,’ she said. ‘He left almost an hour ago.’
‘Where was he going?’
She shrugged. ‘Back to Bombay.’
Sam would have cautioned me against trusting her. He would have reminded me that I had a propensity for accepting the word of a woman without scrutiny. He would say it without irony too, forgetting the many, many occasions where he had believed a woman more on the strength of her perfume than of her statement. But Sam was not here and I did not believe that this woman was lying. I opted to trust my instinct, and in any case, I had very little option. What was the alternative? Was I to single-handedly search the whole house? All it required was one telephone call to the local thana to check my credentials and the game would be up. The black truth was that the authorities were hunting for me, not Gulmohamed, and my time was running out.
‘Is he leaving from Howrah station?’
She looked at me as though I was being obtuse. ‘Unless he’s decided to take the scenic route and go by steamer, how else would he get there?’
I doubted very much that Gulmohamed would be taking the scenic route.
‘And before you ask,’ she continued, ‘the fastest route from here to Howrah would be by boat, and no, I don’t know the times of the ferry. Now, I take it there is nothing else you wish to ask?’
‘A few last things,’ I said. ‘May I know your name, miss?’
‘Ayisha,’ she said with a smile.
‘Well, Miss Ayisha, you couldn’t, by any chance, lend me twenty rupees?’
She could not help but laugh.
‘The disguise of a poor peon has certain drawbacks,’ I said, ‘one of which is a limit to the amount of cash I am able to carry. I didn’t envisage chasing your uncle twice to Metiabruz and back.’
It was a lie, of course. I had started out yesterday with my wallet brimming with silver. Most of it though, as well as the wallet, was now in the pockets of the arresting officers at Budge Budge.
She rose, walked over to a sideboard and opened a drawer, before returning with two crisp ten-rupee notes. She held them out, but then thought better of it.
‘Before I give you these, don’t you think I deserve to know your real name too? I mean, how can I be sure I’ll get my money back?’
‘Believe me, I shall make sure you get it back,’ I said. ‘And my name is Surendranath Banerjee.’
‘Surendranath Banerjee,’ she said, trying it out. ‘Now that is the name of a man who’d know a word like imperative.’