The Glass Palace

by Amitav Ghosh

  The Collector gave the appearance of being delighted when Uma told him that Rajkumar and Dolly were to be married. ‘Splendid!’ he said. ‘Splendid!’

  Uma explained that Dolly wanted to have a very quiet ceremony: she was sure that the Queen would do her best to stop the marriage if she got to know of it.

  In the spirit of the moment the Collector offered several suggestions. Why not have the ceremony at the Residency? He would issue the licence himself and preside over their marriage in person. Afterwards, perhaps champagne; just for the four of them—Uma must make sure to be careful in husbanding the last batch of ice from Bombay . . . The enthusiasm in his voice was such that Uma couldn’t help feeling that her husband was delighted by the prospect of seeing the last of Dolly.

  The day came and Uma provided two garlands, of marigolds and jasmine. She wove them herself, with flowers picked from the garden. At the end of the civil ceremony, in the Collector’s ‘camp office’, Dolly and Rajkumar garlanded each other, smiling like children.

  The plan was for the couple to spend their wedding night at the Dak Bungalow where Rajkumar was staying. Dolly had smuggled a few belongings and a bagful of clothes out of Outram House with the help of the First and Second Princesses. The First Princess had given her a pair of earrings and the Second a jade bracelet. They were happy for her and they were sure the other girls would be too. But for the moment in order to keep the news a secret, they hadn’t told the two younger Princesses. Later, when everything was safely signed and sealed, Dolly could go back to Outram House with her new husband to pay her respects.

  Everything went as planned until it came time for Dolly and Rajkumar to sign the register. Uma was the only available witness and Dolly balked at asking the bearers. But just then, quite miraculously, Mrs Khambatta, a lady photographer from Bombay, drew up in a gaari, toting her bags and her camera. Rajkumar went running out to rope her in. She readily agreed to be a witness and afterwards they all went out to the garden. The Collector called for champagne. A gentle breeze was blowing in from the sea. The light was mellow and golden.

  Mrs Khambatta’s camera was an instrument of superb craftsmanship: a 1901 Graflex single-lens reflex, with a cube-like body, a bellows extension and a four-sided hood. It was fitted with a Globe wide-angle lens which proved perfect for the panorama deployed before the shutter. Before exposing her first plate, Mrs Khambatta spent a full half-hour working with a Hurter and Driffield Actinograph Exposure Calculator, peering at its slide rule and calibrating its rotary cylinder for the present time and latitude. Then, signalling her readiness with an upraised hand, she exposed several plates in quick succession, standing back from her camera to squint at the group before squeezing the bulb of her Guery Flap-Shutter.

  At dusk Rajkumar and Dolly gathered up their belongings. Uma lent them Kanhoji’s gaari. On the way to the Dak Bungalow Dolly changed her mind.

  ‘Let’s go to Outram House now,’ she said to Rajkumar. ‘Let’s talk to the Queen. Let’s get it over with.’

  It was dark by the time they got there. A lamp was shining in the King’s room and another in Sawant’s by the gate. The Princesses would be downstairs, Dolly thought, sitting around a single light, to save oil. How surprised they would be!

  The gates were locked, so she told Kanhoji to use the knocker. He banged hard for a full five minutes but there was no answer.

  Dolly went to the gatehouse window and knocked on the wooden shutters. ‘Mohanbhai,’ she called out. ‘Open the gates. It’s me, Dolly. I’ve come to say goodbye. Open the gates.’

  The lights in the room went out and a minute or two later, she heard Sawant’s voice, whispering: ‘Dolly?’

  ‘Where are you Mohanbhai?’

  ‘Here. By the gatepost.’ He was peering through the crack between the wall and the gate. ‘Dolly, Mebya knows. She’s told me not to let you in, not to open the gates.’

  Dolly gasped. How could she leave Ratnagiri without saying goodbye to Min and Mebya, to the Princesses? ‘But, Mohanbhai, it’s me, Dolly. Let me in.’

  ‘I can’t, Dolly. You know I would if I could. But Mebya is in one of her rages. You know how angry she gets.’

  There was a pause and then a cloth bundle appeared at the top of the gate.

  ‘Mebya had us pack some of your things,’ said Sawant. ‘She told me to make sure you got this.’

  Dolly let the bundle drop to the ground.

  ‘Mohanbhai, let me in.’ She was pleading now. ‘Just for a few minutes. Just to say goodbye.’

  ‘I can’t, Dolly. I really can’t. Mebya said she would sack me if I did; she said we couldn’t ever say your name again in this house.’

  Dolly began to sob, knocking her head against the gatepost. ‘Don’t cry, Dolly.’ Sawant looked through the crack. ‘We’ll miss you, all of us. Look, the girls are waving to you from up there.’

  The four Princesses were standing close together, at one of the windows upstairs. They waved and she tried to wave back too, but her legs buckled under her. She fell to her knees, sobbing. Rajkumar rushed to lift her off the ground. Holding her up with one arm, he picked up her bundled clothes with his free hand.

  ‘Come, Dolly. Let’s go. There’s nothing to be done.’ He had to lift her bodily off the ground to get her inside the gaari.

  ‘Chalo, chalo, jaldi chalo.’

  When they were trotting past the police-barracks, near the parade ground, some of the constables’ wives and children came out to wave. They all seemed to know that Miss Dolly was going away.

  She waved back, wiping the tears fiercely from her eyes. She would not allow herself to be robbed of this last glimpse of the lane: the leaning coconut palms, the Union Jack, flapping above the gaol on its crooked pole, the rickety teashop at the entrance to the lane. This was home, this narrow lane with its mossy walls of laterite. She knew she would never see it again.

  She sat bent over in her seat, hugging her old clothes. A cloth bundle, once again: only this time she wasn’t carrying it on her head.

  With her hand raised to knock, Uma noticed that the door of the Collector’s study was slightly ajar. She could see him through the crack. He was sitting upright in his straight-backed chair. His glasses were dangling around his neck and he was staring into space.

  He turned with a start when she knocked. ‘Come in.’

  She seated herself opposite him, in a chair that had no arms. This was where his stenographer sat, she guessed, little Mr Ranade, with a pad on his knees, taking dictation. They looked at each other silently across the broad, leather-covered expanse of the desk. A letter lay open in front of him; she noted, in passing, that it was sealed with a florid rosette of red wax. She was the first to drop her eyes and it was only then that he spoke.

  ‘You have come to tell me that you want to go home,’ he said. ‘Am I right?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘I am useless here. There’s nothing I can do for you that you cannot do better for yourself. And with Dolly gone . . .’

  He cleared his throat, cutting her short. ‘And may I ask when you will be coming back?’

  She made no answer, looking silently down at her lap.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You deserve better than me.’

  He turned his face away abruptly, so that she could see only one side of his face.

  ‘You can marry again,’ she said quickly, ‘take another wife. I will see that my family makes no objection.’

  He raised a finger to silence her.

  ‘Could you tell me,’ he said in a coldly formal voice. ‘What did I do wrong? Did I mistreat you? Behave badly?’ ‘No. Never.’ The tears welled up in her eyes, blinding her. ‘You have been nothing but kind and patient. I have nothing to complain of.’

  ‘I used to dream about the kind of marriage I wanted.’ He was speaking more to himself now than to her. ‘To live with a woman as an equal, in spirit and intellect: this seemed to me the most wonderful thing lif
e could offer. To discover together the world of literature, art: what could be richer, more fulfilling? But what I dreamt of is not yet possible, not here, in India, not for us.’ He ran his fingers over the letter in front of him, picking idly at the heavy wax seal.

  ‘So you’ll go back to live with your parents then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve picked a good time.’ He gave her his thin, ironic smile. ‘You would have had to pack your things soon enough anyway.’

  ‘Why?’ She was suddenly alert. ‘What are you talking about?’ He picked the letter off his desk and tapped it with his gold-rimmed glasses. ‘This is from the Chief Secretary, in Bombay. It came today. A reprimand, as it were. The Princess’s pregnancy has awoken our teachers suddenly to the enormity of what they have done to this family. All the letters that I and my predecessors wrote had no effect whatever. But the smell of miscegenation has alarmed them as nothing else could have: they are tolerant in many things, but not this. They like to keep their races tidily separate. The prospect of dealing with a half-caste bastard has set them rampaging among their desks. I am to be the scapegoat for twenty years of neglect. My tenure here is terminated and I am to return to Bombay.’

  He brought his fingertips together and smiled across the desk in his thinly ironic way.

  ‘As I said, you’ve chosen a good time to leave.’

  In the Ratnagiri boathouse there was one craft that was rarely used. This was the double-oared racing scull that had once belonged to Mr Gibb, the rowing legend.

  It was the Collector’s practice to go down to the Ratnagiri boat-house a couple of times each week. He had done a little rowing at Cambridge and would have done more if he had not been so busy studying for the Civil Service examinations. He enjoyed the focused concentration of the sport, the sense of moving ahead at a regulated pace, quick but unhurried. Besides, he had an almost religious belief in the importance of exercise.

  Today, as he was walking into the boathouse, the Collector’s eyes fell on Mr Gibb’s racing shell. The elderly chowkidar who looked after the boathouse talked often of Mr Gibb. He was a rowing blue, Mr Gibb, and a skilled sailor besides. In the history of the Ratnagiri Club he was the only person who was known to have taken the slim, fragile craft out into the open sea and come back to tell the tale.

  On his departure Mr Gibb had donated his shell to the boathouse. Since that time the boat had turned into a monument of sorts, a reliquary of Mr Gibb. It lay at one end of the shed and was never used. The Collector said to the chowkidar: ‘How about this one?’

  ‘That was Mr Gibb’s boat,’ came the answer. ‘It was in that boat that Gibb-sahib used to row out to sea.’

  ‘Is it usable?’

  ‘Yes, sahib. Of course.’ The chowkidar was proud of his job and worked hard to keep his boats in good repair.

  ‘Well then, perhaps I’ll take it out today.’

  ‘You, sahib?’ The chowkidar gasped. ‘But Mr Gibb was very experienced—’

  The Collector bridled at his tone. ‘I think I can manage it,’ he said coldly.

  ‘But, sahib—’

  ‘Please do as you’re told.’

  The boat was carried out to the water and the Collector climbed in and picked up the oars. He rowed once across the bay and turned round. He felt oddly exhilarated. The gap between the two arms of the bay began to beckon.

  For several weeks now, he’d been thinking of trying the sea channel. He’d watched the local fishermen when they were slipping out of the bay, marking in his mind the precise point of their exit, the route through which they led their crafts into the open sea.

  One day, he’d told himself, one day . . . He would start with a short, experimental foray, to test the waters, as it were. One day. But there were no more days now. Next week he would be in Bombay, in a windowless office, dealing with municipal taxation. He scarcely noticed that his craft had veered from its trajectory; that its nose had turned westwards, pointing towards the opening of the bay. It was as though the shell had been reclaimed by the spirit of some other, departed official, as though it were steering itself.

  He felt strangely reassured, at peace. It was best to leave these things to men like Mr Gibb: you would always be safe with them, looked after, provided for.

  There was no reason to hurry back to the Residency. No one was waiting for him there. The sea seemed warm and inviting and the scull seemed to know its own way.

  High above the bay, in Outram House, the King was on his way to the balcony, with his father’s gilded glasses clasped in one hand. He had lain awake much of the night and was up even earlier than usual. Dolly’s departure had created an unquietness in the house. He was sensitive to these things; they upset him. It wasn’t easy to cope with change at his age. He’d found it hard to sleep.

  He lifted the glasses to his eyes. The light was not good. The fishermen of Karla village were not out of the estuary yet. Then he spotted the thin, long shape of a racing shell arrowing across the dark water. The oarsman was rowing in a strong, steady rhythm, almost touching his knees with his forehead before straightening out again.

  He was taken aback. It was a long time since he had last seen the shell steering for the open sea—not since Mr Gibb, and that was a long time ago, more than ten years now. And even Mr Gibb had never ventured out on the sea during the monsoons: he wouldn’t have thought of it, he knew about the cross-currents that swept the shore during the rains.

  He watched in surprise as the streamlined craft shot forward in the direction of the foaming white line that separated the calm waters of the bay from the pounding monsoon sea. Suddenly the boat buckled and its nose shot out of the water. The oarsman flung up an arm, and then the undertow took hold of him and sucked him down, beneath the surface. The King started to his feet, in shock. Gripping the balcony’s rails, he leant over the balustrade. He began to shout: ‘Sawant! Sawant!’

  It was early in the morning and his voice had grown prematurely feeble. Sawant was asleep in the gatehouse, on his string bed, with one arm thrown protectively over the First Princess.

  ‘Sawant, Sawant!’

  It was the Queen who heard his shouts. She too had been up all night—thinking of Dolly, remembering how she’d come to her as a child, of how she’d been the only person in the palace who could quiet the Second Princess; of how she had stayed on when the others left.

  ‘Sawant.’

  She climbed slowly out of bed and went over to see what the King wanted.

  The King pointed to a few bits of wreckage, drifting in the distance, at the mouth of the bay. ‘The Collector!’

  She took a long look with his gilded binoculars.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘I think so.’

  If it were not for that man Dolly would still be at Outram House: Dolly, whom she’d adopted and brought up and loved like her own child. But Dolly was gone now, and it was right that he should pay. She leant over the balustrade and spat into the garden, in commemoration of her gaoler’s death.

  part three

  The Money Tree

  fifteen

  Rangoon’s Barr Street Passenger Jetty was something of a curiosity. It was built to resemble a floating pavilion, with fine woodwork and a peaked roof, like that of an Alpine cottage. Saya John held on to one of its carved posts as he leant over the jetty’s side, scanning the river for the Nuwara Eliya, the steamer in which Rajkumar was returning to Rangoon with Dolly. When at last he spotted the ship, it was still a long way off, just approaching the mouth of the Pazundaung Creek, fighting the powerful currents that tore at the river’s mud-brown surface.

  It had been decided that Rajkumar and Dolly would stay initially with Saya John, at his spacious second-floor flat on Blackburn Lane—such accommodation as there was at Rajkumar’s Kemendine compound was too rudimentary for the two of them to inhabit together. Saya John had sent a telegram to Rajkumar to let him know that he and Dolly were welcome to stay at Blackburn Lane until such time as they were able to bui
ld a habitable home.

  The Pazundaung Creek was the wide inlet that marked the southern boundary of the city. Many of Rangoon’s sawmills and rice mills were concentrated along the shores of this waterway—among them also the timberyard that was Rajkumar’s principal place of business. When the steamer drew abreast of the creek, Rajkumar, watching from the Nuwara Eliya’s bows, caught a brief glimpse of the raised teakwood cabin that served as his office. Then the whole Rangoon waterfront opened up in front of him: the Botataung Pagoda, the stately buildings of the Strand, the golden finial of the Shwe Dagon in the distance.

  Rajkumar turned impatiently away and headed for his cabin. Since early that morning he had been trying to persuade Dolly to step outside: he was eager to show her this vista of Rangoon from the river; eager also to see whether she remembered any of it from her journey out, twenty-five years before. But over the last three days, as their ship approached Burma, Dolly had grown increasingly withdrawn. That morning she had refused to step out on deck; she’d said that she was seasick; that she would come out later, when she felt better; for the time being she wanted only to rest and collect herself.

  But now there was no time at all. They would be at the jetty in a matter of minutes. Rajkumar burst into the cabin, his voice loudly exuberant: ‘Dolly—we’re home. Come on— outside . . .’ When she didn’t answer he broke off. She was sitting on the bed, curled up, with her forehead resting on her knees, dressed in the red, silk htamein that she’d changed into for the occasion.

  ‘What’s the matter Dolly?’ He touched her shoulder to find that she was shivering. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She shrugged his hand off. ‘I’m all right. I’ll come later; just let me sit here until everyone else is off the ship.’

  He knew better than to make light of her apprehensions. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back for you in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll be ready then.’

  Dolly stayed as she was, with her head resting on her knees, trying to calm herself. She felt a jolt as the steamer docked and then she heard the voices of coolies and porters ringing through the gangways. Rippling patterns of opalescent light were dancing on the ceiling, shining in through a porthole, off the river’s silt-dark surface. In a while, the cabin door squeaked open, and she heard Rajkumar’s voice: ‘Dolly . . .’