The Glass Palace

by Amitav Ghosh

  It was not uncommon, of course, for hired crews to make demands just as the day’s work was getting started: that was exactly when they were in the best position to bargain. Rajkumar’s original plan had been to go to the bank in the early afternoon, when the work was almost done. With the Christmas holidays beginning tomorrow, this was the last day in the week when the banks would be open. He’d taken the precaution of visiting the bank the day before to make sure that the money was ready and available. He could have taken it with him right then, but had thought better of it. It wasn’t safe—especially now that they were alone at home, with no gatekeepers to keep watch. He’d decided to come back when the work was near completion.

  This new development meant that Rajkumar would have to change his plans. He persuaded the men to start work, promising to have the money ready at midday. He went to the window of his office to watch them get started.

  He smiled as he looked down on the yard, with its huge, neat stacks of timber. It was unnerving to think that this was the sum total of everything he possessed. He knew he ought to be on his way, but he couldn’t help dawdling. Even now, after all these years, he could not resist the spectacle of watching elephants at work: once again he found himself marvelling at the sure-footedness with which they made their way through the narrow aisles, threading their great bodies between the timber stacks. There was something almost preternatural about the dexterity with which they curled their trunks around the logs.

  He spotted Neel, darting between the elephants. It made Rajkumar nervous to see his son down there, with the animals.

  ‘Neel,’ Rajkumar called out. ‘Be careful.’

  Neel turned round, a wide smile on his bearded face. He waved.

  ‘I’ll be fine, Apé. You should be on your way to the bank now. Don’t leave it too late.’

  Rajkumar looked at his watch. ‘There’s still time. The bank’s not even open yet.’

  Doh Say added his voice to Neel’s. ‘Yes, go now, Rajkumar. The sooner you get there, the sooner you’ll be back. I’ll take care of everything here—it’ll be all right.’

  Rajkumar walked out into the street and found a cycle-rickshaw. The driver pedalled hard and they soon found themselves nearing the centre of the city. The traffic was heavy and Rajkumar was afraid that he’d be held up. But the driver threaded deftly through the streets and brought him to the bank in good time.

  Rajkumar paid off the driver and climbed a wide flight of stairs. The bank’s main doors were closed: it was still a quarter of an hour to opening time. Some half-dozen men were already waiting at the door. Rajkumar joined the line. The morning was exceptionally clear with scarcely a cloud in the sky. It was an unusually cool day for Rangoon and many passers-by were swathed in woollen shawls and cardigans.

  The bank was situated at a busy intersection. The surrounding streets were jammed with the usual start-of-the-day rush-hour traffic. Buses were inching along the road, belching smoke; under looped awnings of wire, trams were rumbling by, their bells tinkling.

  Suddenly, an air-raid siren started up, somewhere in the distance. Neither Rajkumar nor the people around him paid much attention. Air-raid warnings had sounded several times over the last few weeks—they had all proved to be false alarms. At the bottom of the bank’s steps, a footpath hawker was frying baya-gyaw in a large, soot-blackened pot. She grimaced in irritation and went on with what she was doing. Rajkumar’s response was much the same as hers: he was annoyed to think of the delays the sirens would cause.

  The sirens sounded a second time and now people paid more attention. It was unusual to have two alarms going off in such quick succession. Heads appeared in the windows of the buses and trams; eyes turned towards the sky as though in search of rain.

  Rajkumar spotted an air-raid warden in a tin hat. He was walking down the street, waving his arms at pedestrians. Rajkumar knew the warden: he was an Anglo-Burmese bookmaker, an acquaintance from his own racing days. He went hurrying down the steps to accost him.

  The warden wasted no time on civilities. ‘Better find a safe place, Mr Raha,’ he said brusquely. ‘The balloon is definitely up. They’ve passed the second warning system.’ Cupping his hands around his mouth the warden began to shout at the passers-by: ‘Get out of here; get to your shelters, go home . . .’

  A few people stared but otherwise no one paid attention. The warden fumed, with his hands on his hips. ‘Look at them; they think it’s a bloody circus . . .’

  There was a small patch of garden in front of the bank. Months before, slit trenches had been dug between the ornamental palms. But in the meantime evil-smelling pools of moisture had accumulated in the trenches, along with white-haired mango-pits and other bits of refuse. People balked at jumping in.

  Rajkumar went back up the steps to see if the bank had opened. Just then the air-raid sirens went off, for the third time. Now everyone took notice. The traffic on the streets came to an abrupt halt. There was no panic and no running for shelter. Instead people climbed out of their trams and buses and stood on the streets in a half-disbelieving daze, looking skywards, shading their eyes against the light. Several men came up the stairs to stand beside Rajkumar: the bank’s threshold commanded an excellent view of the surroundings.

  ‘Listen.’ A low steady droning became audible in the distance.

  The sound lent a sudden and ominous credibility to the idea of an imminent air raid. There was a moment of uncertainty and then panic swept like a gale down the streets. People began to run. Some darted indoors, others hurried away, dodging through the stalled traffic. The foul-smelling trenches at the corner were filled in seconds.

  Somewhere nearby, a woman let out a howl of pain. Spinning round, Rajkumar saw that the baya-gyaw cart had been upended at the bottom of the steps; the vendor’s pot had tipped over, spattering her with boiling oil. She was running down the road, shrieking, clawing at her clothes with both hands.

  Rajkumar decided not to brave the panicked crowd. Instead he braced himself against the bank’s heavy doors. The distant drone changed into a loud rhythmic noise. Then the first planes came into view: tiny specks, approaching from the east. The city’s anti-aircraft guns opened up with a dull, thudding sound. The guns were few and they were concentrated mainly in the vicinity of Mingaladon airport and the military cantonment. But there was something reassuring about the thought that the city’s defences were operational. Even in the midst of the panic, many people could be heard to cheer.

  The bombers changed formation as they approached the eastern peripheries of the city, dipping lower in the sky. Their fuselages opened and their cargo of bombs began to descend, trailing behind the craft like glinting, tinsel ribbons. It was as though an immense silver curtain had suddenly appeared over the eastern horizon.

  The first bombs fell several miles away, the explosions following in evenly spaced rhythmic succession. Suddenly there was a booming sound, several times louder than all the preceding blasts. From somewhere in the eastern reaches of the city, a huge cloud of black smoke mushroomed up towards the sky, almost engulfing the bombers.

  ‘They’ve hit the oil tanks,’ someone said, ‘on the Pazundaung Creek.’

  Rajkumar knew at once that this was right. His stomach lurched. The city’s main oil reservoirs were on the far side of the creek, well within sight of his timberyard. He looked up at the bombers and saw that they were making another run over the same area. He realised now that they were not bombing blindly: they were targeting the city’s long waterfront, aiming for its mills, warehouses, tanks and railway lines.

  Suddenly Rajkumar thought of the elephants, working in his yard. He recalled how unpredictable these animals were in their response to noise. It sometimes took just a single sharp sound to stampede a herd. Once, in the old days, at a teak camp, he had witnessed such a stampede; the echo of a gunshot had startled an old cow elephant into producing a distinctive trumpeting note; this had triggered an instinctive response in the herd. There had been a lot of damage and it had
taken the oo-sis hours to regain control of their animals.

  What would happen if a team of elephants were to panic inside the log-jammed confines of a timberyard? It was unthinkable.

  Rajkumar could no longer bear to remain where he was. He set off on foot, in the direction of Pazundaung. The bombs were coming closer now, falling in curtains, floating towards the city’s centre. Suddenly a bullock-cart appeared directly ahead, racing at him down the footpath. The runaway bullocks were foaming at the mouth, showing the whites of their eyes. The driver was screaming, holding on to the sides of the cart. Rajkumar jumped aside just in time to let it pass by.

  A flight of planes was passing directly overhead. Rajkumar looked up into the bright, clear December sky. They swooped downwards and their bays opened. Strings of bombs appeared, falling sidewise, catching the light, sparkling like diamonds.

  There were no trenches nearby. Rajkumar crouched in a doorway, holding his hands over his head. The air shook and he was aware of the sound of shattering glass.

  He lost track of how long he stayed there. He stirred only when he felt a warmth at his back. Turning around he saw a dog, pushing against him, whimpering in fear. He thrust the dog aside and stood up. Columns of smoke were climbing into the sky from all around him. He thought of Dolly, Manju and Jaya, his grandchild. He glanced in the direction of Kemendine and was relieved to see that that part of the city was relatively unaffected. He started to walk in the other direction, towards his timberyard, in Pazundaung.

  On Merchant Street a marketplace had been hit. Fruit and vegetables lay scattered along the sides of the road. Already beggars and ragpickers were scratching through the debris. He noticed the burnt-out remains of a shop and recalled, almost with a sense of nostalgia, that this was his favourite place to buy tandoori chicken. A blast had driven a set of skewers through the clay walls of the oven, breaking it in half, like an eggshell. He heard a man’s voice calling for help. He hurried on. He had no time: he had to get to his yard in Pazundaung.

  He passed the storefront of Rowe and Co. The windows were shattered and there were gaping holes in the walls. Looters were climbing in through the gaps. He could see the store’s Christmas tree lying aslant on the floor. There was an old woman working busily beside it, her face white with talcum powder. She was picking cottonwool off the floor, stuffing it into a sack.

  In front of the telegraph office a water main had been hit. A ten-foot-high jet was spraying into the sky. There was water everywhere, gathering in puddles, flowing down the road. A whirlpool was swirling around the mouth of the shattered main.

  People had been crouching along the walls of the telegraph office when the water source was hit. Many had died. Dismembered limbs could be seen in the pool that was spinning around the main: there was a child’s arm, a leg. Rajkumar averted his eyes and walked on.

  Approaching Pazundaung, he saw that both sides of the creek were blanketed in flames. While still a good distance away he spotted the perimeter walls of his yard. They were shrouded in clouds of smoke.

  Everything he owned was in that place, all that he had ever worked for; a lifetime’s accumulation of labour stored as a single cache of wood. He thought of the elephants and the bombs falling around them; the flames leaping from the well-stacked wood; the explosions, the trumpeting.

  It was he who had concentrated all his holdings in this one place—that too was a part of the plan—and now the bombs had claimed it all. But it didn’t matter; nothing mattered so long as Neel was unharmed. The rest were just things, possessions. But Neel . . .

  He turned into the alley that led to his yard and saw that it was filled with swirling clouds of smoke. On the skin of his face, he could feel the scorching heat of the fire that was raging through his yard. He shouted into the smoke: ‘Neel.’

  He saw a figure taking shape in the distance. He began to run.

  ‘Neel? Neel?’

  It was Doh Say. His lined, wrinkled face was blackened with smoke. He was weeping.

  ‘Rajkumar . . .’

  ‘Where’s Neel?’

  ‘Forgive me, Rajkumar.’ Doh Say covered his face. ‘There was nothing I could do. The elephants ran wild. I tried to send your boy away but he wouldn’t listen. The logs got loose and he fell under.’

  Now Rajkumar saw that Doh Say had been dragging a body through the alley, pulling it away from the fire. He ran over to it and fell on his knees.

  The body was almost unrecognisable, crushed by an immense weight. But despite the terrible disfigurement Rajkumar knew that this was his son and that he was dead.

  Once, when she was still a girl, Manju had observed the shaving of a widow’s head. This was at a neighbour’s house in Calcutta: a barber had been paid to do it and the women of the family had been round to help.

  In her sewing box Manju came upon a pair of scissors. Seating herself at her dresser she looked into the mirror and tried the scissors on her hair. The blades were dull with use and her hair was strong, thick and black—a young woman’s hair. The scissors were useless. She dropped them back into her sewing box.

  The baby began to cry, so Manju shut the door on her. She went down the stairs to the kitchen—a dark, sooty, airless room, at the back of the house. She found a knife, a long, straight-bladed knife with a serrated edge and a wooden handle. She tried it on her hair but found that it was no more use than the scissors.

  Casting around for a better instrument, Manju recalled the scythes that had once been used to cut the compound’s grass. These scythes were very sharp: she remembered how the hissing of their blades had echoed through the house. The malis who’d tended the grounds were long gone, but the scythes remained. She knew where they were to be found: in an outhouse by the front gate.

  She opened the front door and ran across the compound to the outhouse. The scythes were exactly where she had thought, piled in a heap with the other gardening implements. She stood in the knee-deep grass of the compound and held up her hair, drawing it away from her head. She raised the scythe and hacked at it, blindly, because her hand was behind her head. She saw a lock of hair falling on to the grass and this gave her encouragement. She sawed at another handful and then another. She could see the pile of hair growing in the grass around her feet. The one thing she could not understand was the pain: why should it hurt so much to cut one’s hair?

  She heard a voice, speaking softly, somewhere nearby. She turned around and saw that it was Raymond, standing beside her. He put out a hand, reaching for the scythe. She took a step away: ‘You don’t understand . . .’ she said. She tried to smile, to let him know that she knew what she was doing and that it could not be done any other way. But suddenly his hands were on her wrist. He twisted her arm and the scythe fell from her grasp. He kicked it, sending it flying aside.

  Manju was astonished at the strength of Raymond’s grip; at the way he was restraining her with a wrestler’s armlock. No one had ever held her in this way—as though she were a madwoman.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, Raymond?’

  He twisted her hands around so that they were in front of her face. She saw that her fingers were smeared with blood.

  ‘You’ve cut yourself,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve cut your scalp.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ She tried to jerk her arms free but this only made him tighten his hold. He led her into the house and made her sit in a chair. He found some cottonwool and swabbed her scalp. The baby began to cry: they could hear her downstairs. Raymond led her to the stairs and gave her a nudge.

  ‘Go. The child needs you.’

  She went up a few steps, and then she couldn’t go any more. She couldn’t bear to think of going into that room and picking up the child. It was pointless. Her breasts had run dry. There was nothing she could do. She buried her face in her hands.

  Raymond came up the stairs and pulled her head back, gripping it by the remains of her hair. She saw him drawing his arm back and then his hand hit her across the cheek. She clutched her sti
nging face and looked at him. His gaze was steady and not unkind.

  ‘You are the mother,’ he said. ‘You must go to the child. A child’s hunger doesn’t stop, no matter what . . .’ He followed her to the room and kept watch until she picked the baby up and held her to her breast.

  The next day it was Christmas and in the evening Doh Say and Raymond left the house to go to church. Shortly afterwards the sirens sounded and the bombers came back. The baby had been sleeping but the sirens woke her. She began to cry.

  The day of the first raid, Manju and Dolly had known exactly what to do: they’d gone to a windowless room on the ground floor and waited until the sirens sounded the all clear. There had been such a sense of urgency then: but now none of it remained. It was as though the house were already empty.

  Manju stayed in bed with the baby while the bombs fell. That night the infant’s voice seemed louder than ever: louder than the sirens, the bombs, the distant explosions. After a while Manju could no longer bear the sound of the child’s crying. She climbed out of bed and went down the stairs. She opened the front door and stepped into the compound. It was very dark except for distant flames and flashes of light shooting through the sky.

  She saw another figure ahead of her and somehow, even in the darkness, she knew that it was Rajkumar. This was the first time that she’d seen him since Neel’s death. He was still dressed in the clothes that he’d been wearing that morning: a pair of trousers and a shirt that was now blackened with soot. His head was thrown back and he was staring into the sky. She knew what he was looking for and she went to stand beside him.

  The planes were far up in the sky, barely visible, like the shadows of moths. She longed for them to come closer; close enough to see a face. She longed to know what kind of being this was that felt free to unleash this destruction: what was it for? What sort of creature could think of waging war upon herself, her husband, her child—a family such as hers—for what reason? Who were these people who took it upon themselves to remake the history of the world?