Inspector Ghote Draws a Line

by H. R. F. Keating

  But now the priest came to an abrupt halt.

  Standing, looking up, listening, Ghote realised that, despite the fellow’s air of ease, this “one thing,” whatever it was, was something that worried him still. Ghote waited in silence for him to break the barrier that had so suddenly loomed up in front of him.

  At last he did.

  “Well,” he said with another smile, a slightly lopsided smile. ‘Well, it was masturbating, I guess. I mean I’d got it into my head that that was what they meant by the sin against the Holy Ghost. You know, they used to say that that was the one sin that even God could not forgive. Well, I’d gotten myself into a rare old state about that. I wanted to do it. I wanted like hell to do it. But I thought, ‘God sees me, sees me at it just once, and that’s it, it’s the end. There’ll never be any hope for me then. It’ll be hell gaping wide, whatever I do all the rest of my life.’”

  Very well, very well, Ghote thought, but there have been plenty of boys believing something like that. So why was Father Adam telling him all this now?

  “Yes, yes?” he said, allowing his impatience to show.

  The American grinned again.

  “Heck,” he said. “There came the day when I just did it. I thought, ‘I’m going to, maybe the ceiling’ll split wide right over me and a thunderbolt come down, but I’m going to do it.’ And I did. And the ceiling stayed just the way it was. And I slowly began to realise that there was no black, black line drawn anywhere. I guess that afternoon there back in Boston was what made me see the truth of situation ethics, though no one had even invented the term then.”

  Again there came a sideways smile, a little deprecating, not a little attractive.’

  “Please, what are situation ethics?”

  The priest looked sharply surprised.

  “You don’t know, and you’re a Doctor of Philosophy?”

  Ghote felt a hot flush of shame, sticky and clammy on the inside edge of his knees.

  “Well, yes,” he said in haste. “Yes, of course I am knowing. It is just—it is just that in India we are calling them the ethics of situation.”

  Would the lie pass?

  It would.

  ‘Well,” the American said, “all that’s a long way round, I guess, to explain that I was on my way to steal, as a guest in the house.” “To steal? What to steal?”

  He felt almost totally bewildered.

  But the priest, coming trotting down the stairs now, simply gave him a rueful grin.

  “To steal from the fridge in the kitchen,” he said. “That ice cream stuff. What’d you call it? Kulfi. Just can’t resist it.”

  And with swift-scissoring khaki-clad legs the priest—could he be a priest, after what he had said?—went rapidly past him, down the remaining stairs, and off in the direction of the kitchen quarters. Ghote stood where he was, feeling distinctly dazed.

  What had all that meant? Had the man been telling the simple truth? Did the simple truth mean anything to a man like that? What were these situation ethics he talked about? How could he ever find out now, now that he had told that quick lie? Did they mean that, somehow, the priest felt himself to be above things like ordinary simple truthtelling? And, if so, what did that imply about his attitude towards Sir Asif?

  Sir Asif. Better hurry on up the stairs, or he would be waking up and coming out of his room and finding him with—

  A sound, some small indefinable sound, at the head of the stairs came to his ears. He looked up.

  Sir Asif was standing there looking down.

  “Situation ethics, as I understand it, Dr. Ghote,” came that coldly articulate voice, “means that what is considered the correct solution in any moral problem depends, not on general principles, but on the circumstances of that situation themselves. It is, if you like, the theory by which a man asks himself at every fresh instant, ‘Should I do to death this individual by whom I am confronted?’ ”

  Ghote felt yet more confused than ever, as if his mind was that expanse of roadway back in Bombay at Bori Bunder where under the looming bulk of Victoria Terminus station at the peak of the morning rush conflicting parties push themselves ruthlessly in every direction: cars twisting and turning and hooting; narrow pushcarts making their way past as quickly as their straining coolies can stride; bicycles by the hundreds, each with bell furiously ringing as if that and not its pedals was its motive-power; horsedrawn victorias pressing forward, cumbersome and slow; and thousands and thousands of walking office staff, of every kind and variety, hurrying this way and that, each one of them apparently dangerously late for work.

  Was Sir Asif telling him obliquely that the American priest was the person threatening him with death? Or had he just chosen that particular example out of the blue? Or had he chosen it with the deliberate purpose of putting confusion into his head?

  Ghote shook himself, as well as he could with the dragging weight of his suitcase still tugging at his extended arm.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said. “You have made that matter altogether clear.”

  “Not at all, my dear fellow. I am, as you know, much in your debt. If I have in any way repaid it, I am more than pleased.”

  Could he somehow swing the case behind his knees? Or was it too late for that?

  “But, my dear Doctor, it is by no means yet time for tea, so I think I shall retire to my bed again. And I would advise you to take your case along to your room and do the same. It’s really extremely hot this afternoon.”

  And the old man turned and slowly made his way along the passage out of sight.

  Below, he waited until he was sure that the judge’s bedroom door would be closed behind him and then, bending a little at the knees, he resumed his climb up the stairs. Once in his own room he let the case drop and flopped down onto the bed.

  Above him the fan was still managing to complete its every circuit. And still sounding as if, with each one, it was going to come at last to a stop. Errr-bock. Errr-bock. Errr-bock.

  He thought about his released burden.

  How absurd it had been of him to have had those ideas about what Sir Asif would feel if he saw it. It was a notion he had built up entirely in his own mind. Of course the old man was aware that not twenty-four hours earlier he had ordered him out of the house. Nothing that happened to remind him of that was going to alter his attitude to him now. By sheer good fortune it had fallen to him to do the old man a great service, and that was not going to be forgotten just at the sight of a suitcase.

  No, for some obscure interior reason, he had erected a whole wall of fears and shames over the wretched object. He need never have toiled out in the sun to fetch it. All that had been a daytime nightmare he had blown up for himself. And in fact it had been another piece of good luck that Sir Asif had been disturbed by his conversation with Father Adam and had come out of his room and seen the disgraceful thing: that had shown him what a fool he had made himself. Absolutely unnecessarily.

  He gave a long sigh.

  A little self-knowledge was something. But it would not help him by one inch to solve the mystery of who had been typing downstairs, of who it was who had put the other threatening notes in Sir Asif's way, of whether they truly meant to kill him on the anniversary of the Madurai sentences.

  But the regular, rhythmical errr-bock, errr-bock of the fan above him soon took its toll. He fell asleep.

  17

  Coming abruptly awake, Ghote knew immediately, without any need to peer blearily at his watch, that he was late for tea. Cursing, he slid rapidly off the high bed, hurried across to the long mirror in the front of the dark, carved almirah, and did his best to make his crumpled clothes look presentable. No tie. Still down somewhere being ironed. It would be another black mark when he faced Sir Asif.

  He pulled himself up.

  What nonsense. Here he was already erecting another barrier. Sir Asif would know very well why he had no tie and he would think none the worse of him for appearing at the tea table without one. And he would think too, d
oubtless, that a guest who had started a long day with that fearful struggle with his mad son was entitled to sleep late in the afternoon.

  No, he must not set up these walls in his mind. They were only a kind of excuse. Ways of making out that he was prevented from facing Sir Asif on equal terms. Because that was the heart of it: he was afraid of the man. The fact of the matter always had been that it was the judge, the possible victim, who was actually his opponent. So from the very beginning he had been scared, and had kept pretending that this opponent had special unfair advantages or that he himself had special disadvantages. Like the suitcase. He had done it so that he could avoid admitting that, when it came down to it, what he had to do was to stand up to the judge and fight him, blow for blow. Psychological swipe for psychological swipe.

  He felt suddenly pleased with that last phrase, and he had been thinking in English, too. Psychological swipes. That might not be the language of one of Justice Asif Ibrahim’s given judgements, but it had a strength of its own. He was getting better.

  He took a last quick look in the mirror. Passable. He crossed over to the door, switched off the fan—it began a long dying whine the moment the hollow click of the switch had sounded—and left to go down to tea.

  They were seated on the wide terrace with its pillar-supported roof, Sir Asif, Begum Roshan with Mr. Dhebar next to her, Father Adam, and the Saint, in exactly the same positions as they had been the day before. On the brass tray with its spindly legged stand there rested precisely the same plates as had been there before, in just the same places. Cucumber sandwiches, curry puffs, and the small round cakes with their flat blobs of pink icing, soft in the heat. Did nothing ever change in the house? Would Sir Asif stay just as he was till the end, till his dying breath, an immovable opponent?

  Psychological swipes, psychological swipes, he repeated to himself as he offered an apology for his tardiness.

  But one thing had changed. Although Ghote himself was late, Sir Asif had not ordered Raman to refrain from serving, as he had when Ghote had been out finding Sikander in his prison and had been late for “Drinks before Dinner.”

  No, the Doctor of Philosophy who had saved Raman from a terrible mauling was a different person in the judge’s eyes from the Doctor of Philosophy who had been imposed on him against his better judgement. So the obdurate old man could change his mind —on rare occasions.

  He lowered himself onto the cane chair that had been left for him. Raman came first with the tea that Begum Roshan had poured and then the plates of cucumber sandwiches and curry puffs.

  Without hesitation he took one of the curry puffs he liked.

  “I am glad you have joined us, Dr. Ghote,” Sir Asif said. “I have been under attack, you know. Father Adam here has been arraigning me in the matter of capital punishment. I hope I may find an ally in you, my dear fellow.”

  Capital punishment, he thought. The Madurai sentences. Was Father Adam delivering the next warning not as a typewritten note but as a veiled verbal threat? Perhaps because he had been disturbed before finishing typing what he had wanted to say?

  “Oh, sir,” he answered Sir Asif, “I am very much thinking you are altogether capable of defending yourself.”

  “Perhaps I may be, perhaps I may be,” the judge replied. “Yet I frequently had occasion when I was on the Bench to warn litigants against presenting their own cases. It was very much a habit with political offenders, you know. Indeed, it happened in the Madurai Case, of which you may have heard. Though I am happy to say that there the defendants eventually took my advice and secured proper representation.”

  The old devil, he thought. To name the case out loud, just like that. But it was typical of him, the unrepentant old devil.

  Or, no, not unrepentant. Unyielding, that was it. Convinced that he had done right in those distant days, nothing that he had found since having given him cause to alter his opinion.

  But all the same a little wicked to tease that white Naxalite like that.

  “Not that you, Judge, took much account of the arguments for the defence in that trial.”

  The Naxalite had risen to the bait like a fish in a garden pool. The judge looked at him, upright in his peacock cane chair, white pagri starched, veined hands grasping the silver knob of his ebony stick.

  “Now why should you believe I did that, Father?” he asked. “What evidence can you have for such an assertion about a case that was tried, surely, before you were even born?”

  “A guy doesn’t have to be there to know the facts.”

  “No. No, indeed. But let me put it to you that he does have to have some reliable evidence. Have you got that?”

  “I’ve read enough about the case.”

  “Ah, yes. And I dare say I could name the book you consulted. A number of curiously biased semi-histories about those days were written shortly after India attained independence. One of them at least deals with the Madurai Case at some length.”

  “Well, maybe I did find out what I know about it from just such a book. Maybe the very one you have in mind. But that doesn't alter the facts. You were determined to find those men guilty from the very start, and you were determined they were going to be hanged at the end.”

  Across the tea table, where Raman had replaced the plates of cucumber sandwiches and curry puffs in exactly the same places as before, hot fury rolled in the hot stillness of the day.

  But Justice Sir Asif Ibrahim was not dismayed by that. His face had lost nothing of its carved-stone immobility.

  “No, my dear Father Adam,” he said without raising his voice. “At the start of every trial over which I presided I went to some lengths to make sure that my mind was entirely open. At the end of any trial I had conducted I passed whatever sentence was appropriate.”

  “That I’ll accept when I accept pigs fly. You judges are all the same. You're bred to believe that you know best. Bred to believe that the police know best. Oh yes, every once in a while when some evidence is just too strong, you make a parade of letting some poor guy go free. But, if you can, you act just on behalf of society, or what you think of as society, which is nothing else than repression of the have-nots in favour of the haves.”

  Still the judge was impassive in face of the tirade.

  A silent spectator, Ghote found himself wishing earnestly that he had slept and never seen the curry puffs.

  “No, there, Father, you are wrong. We judges are not all the same. I wish we were. I think we ought to be. But we are human beings and perfect judicial behaviour at all times is too much for us. There are judges, I grant, who like nothing better than to study the papers before a case comes to court and then to badger counsel throughout with their knowledge of the matter. And, yes, of them it can be said that they have made up their minds beforehand and only the strongest evidence will shake them. But, and I ask you to believe this, the Indian Benches are singularly free of such men and have long been so.”

  “And I don’t believe it. Okay, maybe you genuinely do. You've been brought up to believe such things, against what you daily see and hear. You’re blind, Judge. Blind to the injustice of your courts, blind even to your own motives when you sent men daily to their deaths.”

  “I think not.”

  The judge fell silent. But the force with which he had made his disclaimer was such that even the American priest plainly had no thought of producing any new barrage.

  Then, after the silence had lengthened and once Begum Roshan had jerked sharply forward as if she was about to add a comment of her own, only immediately to think better of it, Sir Asif spoke again.

  “Yes,” he said, “there is a case in point which I think at this distance of time there can be no grave harm in telling you of. You say that we judges cheerfully send men to their deaths. But let me tell you about someone who did precisely that, a quondam colleague of mine, or, to be accurate, a magistrate acting in a judicial capacity whom I once knew. A man who cheerfully sent other men to their deaths.”

  The Saint, cross-
legged on his low-slung cane chair, suddenly leant forward, much as Begum Roshan had done.

  For an instant Ghote expected to hear him speak.

  But it was not words that he interjected. It was a look. Nor was that his radiantly reassuring smile. It was instead, plainly, a plea.

  A plea, Ghote guessed, more for Sir Asif to spare himself the telling of the reminiscence than for that reminiscence not to be heard. The inspector shook his head. Surely he was being fanciful; you could not read that much into a mere look. Or could you?

  But the judge had turned his face and was gazing out now at the parched colourless expanse of the gardens.

  “I see no reason,” he said, “even as a measure of abundant caution to withhold the man's name. He has been dead these many years. I read his obituary in the Times of India, and little enough that said.”

  “Father—” Begum Roshan broke in.

  The judge turned to her in an instant.

  “When I need your comments, Begum, I shall ask for them.”

  And he left a silence then, long enough to allow his daughter to have her say and more, if she dared. She did not.

  “He was called Farqharson-Wetherby. He was for a good many years a magistrate and he later became a judge, a Civil Service appointment, not a legal one. He was what they call an old koi-hai, which was not a bad description in his case. He spoke Tamil, of course, but in the club or the bar common room he never uttered more words in any Indian language than koi hai?—Who’s there?— and as soon as a bearer had presented himself, it was an order for whisky. And when he was not there in the common room they used to talk about him.”

  The judge’s voice came to a halt, and once more the Saint directed at him that look of pleading.

  And this time Ghote was certain that it was saying, “Spare yourself.”