The Glass Palace

by Amitav Ghosh

  ‘Here,’ said Arjun. ‘We’ll hold the hearings here.’

  Rajan fetched a chair from the tai and placed it in front of Arjun. ‘For you, sir,’ he said, with a mocking excess of politeness. ‘Since you are the judge.’

  Arjun ignored him. ‘Let’s begin.’

  Arjun tried to prolong the ritual, asking questions, going over the details. But the facts were clear: there was no disputing them. When he asked Kishan Singh to speak in his own defence, all he could do was beg, clasping his hands together. ‘Sah’b— my wife, my family . . .’

  Rajan was watching Arjun, smiling. ‘Any other procedures? Sir?’

  ‘No.’ Arjun saw that Rajan and the other men had formed a circle: he and Kishan Singh were at its centre. Arjun stood up. ‘I’ve made my decision.’ He turned to Rajan. ‘I’m putting you in charge of the firing squad,’ he said. ‘Ask for volunteers. Do it quickly.’

  Rajan looked straight back at him, shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘None of us will volunteer. He’s one of yours—one of your men. You will have to deal with him yourself.’

  Arjun looked at the circle of men around him. They were all watching him; their faces were expressionless, their eyes unblinking. Arjun turned away; shreds of memory floated through his mind . . . this is how mutiny looks from the other end; you’re alone, and the only thing you can fall back on is the authority of a distant chain of command; on threats of the army’s justice, of eventual retribution once victory is won. But what do you do when you know that there will be no victory, when defeat is certain? How do you claim the validation of the future, knowing that it will not be yours?

  ‘Come, Kishan Singh.’ Arjun helped his former batman to his feet. His body was very light, almost weightless. Arjun could feel his hands growing gentle, as he took hold of Kishan Singh’s arm.

  It was strange to be touching him in this way, knowing what lay ahead.

  ‘Come. Kishan Singh.’

  ‘Sah’b.’

  Kishan Singh stood up and Arjun took hold of his arm, pushing him forward, past the others, out of the tai’s shelter, into the rain. They waded into the tall grass and Kishan Singh stumbled. Arjun put his arm round him and held him up. Kishan Singh was so weak that he could barely walk; he rested his head on Arjun’s shoulder.

  ‘Keep going, Kishan Singh.’ His voice was soft, as though he were whispering to a lover. ‘Sabar karo, Kishan Singh—it’ll be over soon.’

  ‘Sah’b.’

  When they came to the edge of the clearing, Arjun let him go. Kishan Singh dropped to his knees, holding himself upright by clinging to Arjun’s leg.

  ‘Sah’b.’

  ‘Why did you do it, Kishan Singh?’ ‘Sah’b, I was afraid . . .’

  Arjun unbuttoned his leather holster with one hand and took out his sidearm—the Webley that Kishan Singh had always polished and oiled for him.

  ‘Why did you do it, Kishan Singh?’

  ‘Sah’b—I couldn’t go on . . .’

  He looked down at the welts and jungle sores on Kishan Singh’s head. He thought of another time when Kishan Singh had knelt between his feet, asking for his protection; he thought of his guilelessness and trust and innocence, of how he had been moved by the histories that lay behind them—the goodness and strength he had seen in him; all the qualities that he himself had lost and betrayed—qualities that had never been his to start with, he who had sprung from the potter’s wheel, fully made, deformed. He knew he could not allow Kishan Singh to betray himself, to become something other than he was—to become a creature like himself, grotesque, misshapen. It was this thought that gave him the strength to put his gun to Kishan Singh’s head.

  At the touch of the cold metal, Kishan Singh raised his eyes, looking up at him. ‘Sah’b—remember my mother, my home, my child . . .’

  Arjun took hold of Kishan Singh’s head, curling his fingers through his matted hair. ‘It’s because I remember that I must do this, Kishan Singh. So that you cannot forget all that you are—to protect you from betraying yourself.’

  He heard the shot and then he staggered away, towards a clump of trees. He reached for a branch to steady himself, and he saw, suspended in the branches, a dripping shred of flesh and bone. He could not tear his eyes from it: it was a part of Kishan Singh, of the head he’d just held in his hands. He took another step and fell to his knees. When he looked up Rajan and the other men were standing around him, watching. In their eyes there was a kind of pity.

  There was rejoicing at the camp when Doh Say decided to move back to Huay Zedi. The march down the slope was a triumphal, joyful parade, complete with drums, flutes and elephants.

  Doh Say gave Dinu a small place of his own, at the edge of the village. Dinu was just settling in when Raymond sought him out.

  ‘Come with me,’ Raymond said. ‘I have something to tell you.’

  They went down to the stream, and watched the village children shooting for fish in the shallows of Huay Zedi’s stream, with their crossbows and bamboo darts.

  ‘I have some news.’

  ‘What?’

  Arjun was dead, Raymond said. He’d been tracked down by a unit from Force 136; they’d caught up with him at the old teak camp.

  ‘Was it you who led them there?’ Dinu asked.

  ‘No. A deserter. One of his own men—an old soldier.’ ‘But you were there?’ Dinu said. ‘At the end . . . ?’ ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They’d called me in—the people who were hunting him.

  They’d heard that many of his men had left—’

  ‘So was Arjun alone then?’

  ‘Yes. Completely alone—he was back at the abandoned teak camp. The rest of his men had left, they were all gone— they’d taken off their uniforms, put on longyis and disappeared into the forest. I tried to track them—but it was impossible. They knew the jungle, those men—they’d vanished.’

  ‘And Arjun?’

  ‘There was an Indian colonel there. He tried to get Arjun to surrender, told him that it was over, he would be all right. But Arjun shouted back, calling them slaves and mercenaries. And then he stepped out, on the tai’s veranda, shooting . . .’

  Raymond stopped to toss a pebble into the stream.

  ‘It was clear,’ he said, ‘that he did not want to live.’

  forty-six

  In 1946, when it became apparent that Burma would soon become independent, Doh Say decided to leave Huay Zedi and move eastwards, into the mountainous regions of the Burma–Thailand border. The war had pitted the peripheries of the country against its centre: Doh Say was one of many who had deep misgivings about what the future held for Burma’s minorities.

  Most of Huay Zedi’s population took Doh Say’s advice, Dinu among them. The village was abandoned and its inhabitants settled in Loikaw, a small frontier town, deep in the Karenni hills, not far from the border of Thailand. For Dinu, there was one great advantage to being in Loikaw: he was once again able to find photographic materials—many of them smuggled across the Thai border. He set up a studio and became the only professional photographer within hundreds of miles. Even in difficult times, people married, had children— they needed records and were willing to pay, sometimes in cash but more often in kind.

  In 1947, in preparation for the British departure, Burma’s first national elections were held. They were won by General Aung San. It was widely believed that he alone would be able to ensure the country’s unity and stability. But on July 19, shortly before he was to assume office, Aung San was assassinated, along with several of his would-be colleagues. Within months of the assassination, a Communist-led insurgency broke out in central Burma. Some of the army’s Karen units mutinied. The Karen were the country’s largest ethnic group after the Burmans; a major Karen organisation took up arms against the Rangoon Government.

  Other groups followed suit. In a short time, there were sixteen insurgencies raging in Burma.

  One day, in Loikaw, a boy came running to Dinu’s
door. ‘Ko Tun Pe—someone come looking for you.’ Another child followed and then another. They stood in his doorway panting, watching in bright-eyed expectation. They all said the same thing. ‘Ko Tun Pe—you have a visitor; she’s walking up from the bus station.’

  He ignored them; he stayed inside his studio, doing nothing, trying not to look out of the window. Then he heard more voices approaching—a procession appeared to be making its way towards his shack. He could hear people calling out: ‘Ko Tun Pe—look who’s here!’ He saw a shadow on his threshold and looked up. It was Dolly.

  It had taken Dolly several months to track Dinu to Loikaw. She had arrived in Burma late in 1948, just as the insurgencies were getting under way. On coming to Rangoon, she’d discovered that the authority of the elected Government did not extend far beyond the capital’s municipal limits. Even the areas that bordered Mingaladon airport were in rebel hands. Much of Rangoon was in ruins, bombed to ashes by successive air campaigns. With the Kemendine house burnt to the ground, she had nowhere to stay; a friend gave her refuge.

  One day Dolly heard that Dinu’s old friend, Thiha Saw, was back in Rangoon, working for a newspaper. She went to see him to ask if he had any news of Dinu. It so happened that U Thiha Saw had recently attended a political conference where Raymond had also been present. U Thiha Saw told Dolly that Dinu was safe, living in Loikaw. Dolly had left Rangoon by boat the next day. After a journey of several weeks she had boarded a rattling old bus that was on its way to Loikaw.

  Dolly and Dinu spent days talking. She told him about Neel’s death and Manju’s death; about the march across the mountains and how she and Rajkumar had made the journey from the Indian border, through Assam, to Calcutta; she explained why she had come back to Burma alone.

  He took pictures of her. Dolly was very thin and the bones of her face could be seen as clearly as the ridges of a fluted cup. Her hair was tied tightly back at the nape of her neck: it was still dark and glossy, with only a few white streaks at the temple.

  She urged him to write to his father: ‘You should go and find him; you would not have the trouble with him that you had before. He is changed, a different man, almost a child. You should go to him; he needs you—he is alone.’

  Dinu would make no promises. ‘Maybe. Some day.’

  He knew, without her telling him, that she had not come, to stay. He was not surprised when she said: ‘Next week I shall leave for Sagaing.’

  He went with her. This was the first time he’d ventured into the plains since the end of the war. He was stupefied by the devastation. They travelled through territories that had been scorched not once but twice by retreating armies. River channels were blocked and railway lines lay mangled on their sleepers. From village to village a different group or party was in charge. Farmers ploughed round bomb-craters; children pointed out the places where mines lay unexploded. They took roundabout routes, skirting round those districts which were said to be particularly dangerous. They walked and hired ox-carts, and took an occasional bus or a river boat. At Mandalay they stopped a night. Much of the fort was in ruins; the palace had been destroyed by artillery fire; the pavilions that Dolly had known had burnt to the ground.

  They walked the last few miles to Sagaing and took a ferry across the Irrawaddy. To their intense relief Sagaing was unchanged. The hills were tranquil and beautiful, dotted with thousands of white pagodas. Dolly began to walk faster as they approached the nunnery. At the entrance she held Dinu fast and then Evelyn led her in. The next day, when Dinu went to see her, her head was shaved and she was wearing a saffron robe. She looked radiant.

  It was arranged that he would come back to see her again the next year. The time came and he went back, from Loikaw to Sagaing, making the long journey again. At the gates of the nunnery there was a long wait. At length Evelyn came down. She gave him a gentle smile.

  ‘Your mother passed away a month ago,’ she said. ‘We could not inform you because of the troubles. You’ll be happy to know that it was very quick and she suffered no pain.’

  In 1955 Doh Say died, in Loikaw. By this time, he had become a great patriarch and an influential leader. He was mourned by thousands. To Dinu, Doh Say had been almost as much a parent as a mentor: his death was a great blow. Shortly afterwards, Dinu decided to move to Rangoon.

  The mid-1950s were a relatively quiet time in Burma. There was a stand-off in the insurgencies and the Government was a functioning democracy. U Thiha Saw had become the editor of one of the country’s leading Burmese-language newspapers and wielded considerable influence in Rangoon.

  On arriving in Rangoon, Dinu went to see his old friend: he had grown from a thin, tall boy into a portly, authoritative-looking man. He wore colourful longyis and floppy bush shirts, and almost invariably had a pipe in his hands. He gave Dinu a job as a photographer at his newspaper. Later, when Dinu found a suitable place for a studio, it was U Thiha Saw who loaned him the money to buy it.

  Some of the best-known photographers of pre-war Rangoon had been Japanese. After the war many had closed down their studios and disposed cheaply of their equipment. In his years in Loikaw, Dinu had made himself an expert in repairing and restoring old and discarded photographic equipment: he was able to set up his studio at very little cost.

  U Thiha Saw was one of the first visitors to Dinu’s studio. He looked round it with approval. ‘Very nice, very nice.’ He stopped to puff on his pipe. ‘But haven’t you forgotten something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A signboard. Your studio has to have a name, after all.’

  ‘I haven’t thought of a name . . .’ Dinu glanced around.

  Everywhere he looked, his eyes met glass: framed photographs, counter-tops, camera lenses.

  ‘The Glass Palace,’ he said suddenly. ‘That’s what I’ll call it . . .’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It was a favourite phrase of my mother’s,’ he said. ‘Just something she used to say . . .’

  The name stuck and Dinu’s work quickly gained a reputation. The Fourth Princess was now living in Rangoon. Her husband was an artist. They were both regular visitors to the Glass Palace. Soon Dinu had more work than he could handle. He asked around for an assistant and U Thiha Saw recommended a relative, a young woman who was in need of a part-time job. This proved to be none other than Ma Thin Thin Aye— the young girl who’d helped to shelter Dinu when he’d passed through Rangoon in 1942. She was now in her mid-twenties, a student at Rangoon University. She was doing research in Burmese literature, writing a dissertation on The Glass Palace Chronicles—a famous nineteenth-century history, written in the reign of King Bodawpaya, an ancestor of King Thebaw’s. The name of Dinu’s studio struck Ma Thin Thin Aye as a happy coincidence. She took the job.

  Ma Thin Thin Aye was slim, petite and neat in her movements. Every day, at four in the afternoon, she walked down the street, past the pharmacy, to the wooden door that led to the Glass Palace. Standing outside, she would sing out Dinu’s name—‘U Tun Pe!’—to let him know that she’d come. At seven-thirty she and Dinu would close the studio: she’d walk away down the street and Dinu would lock up and go round the corner to climb the stairs to his room.

  After a few weeks, Dinu discovered that Ma Thin Thin Aye’s mornings were not spent solely on research. She was also a writer. Rangoon had a thriving culture of small literary magazines. One of these had published a couple of her short stories.

  Dinu tracked down her stories. They took him by surprise. Her work was innovative and experimental; she was using the Burmese language in new ways, marrying classicism with folk usage. He was astonished by the wealth of allusion, by her use of dialect, by the intensity of her focus on her characters. It seemed to him that she had achieved much that he’d once aspired to himself—ambitions that he’d long abandoned.

  Dinu was a little awed, and this made it hard for him to tell Ma Thin Thin Aye of his admiration for her work. Instead, he began to tease her, in his earnest, staccato way. ‘That story of yours,’
he said, ‘the one about the street where you live . . . You say the people on the street are from many different places . . . from the coasts and the hills . . . Yet in your story they all speak Burmese. How is that possible?’

  She was not at all put out.

  ‘Where I live,’ she said softly, ‘every house on the street speaks a different language. I have no choice but to trust my reader to imagine the sound of each house. Or else I would not be able to write at all about my street—and to trust your reader is not a bad thing.’

  ‘But look at Burma,’ Dinu went on, still teasing. ‘We are a universe on our own . . . Look at all our people . . . Karen, Kayah, Kachin, Shan, Rakhine, Wa, Pa-O, Chin, Mon . . . Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your stories could contain each language, each dialect? If your reader could hear the vastness of the music? the surprise?’

  ‘But they do,’ she said. ‘Why do you think they don’t? A word on the page is like a string on an instrument. My readers sound the music in their heads, and for each it sounds different.’

  At this point in his life, photography was no longer a passion for Dinu. He did only commercial work, making studio portraits and printing other people’s negatives. He bestowed a great deal of care and attention on what he did, but took no particular pleasure in it: mainly he was grateful for possessing a skill that could be parlayed into a livelihood. When people asked him why he no longer photographed outside his studio, he told them that his eyes had lost the habit of looking; his vision had withered for lack of practice.

  The photographs that he thought of as his real work, he rarely showed. These pictures were, in any case, very few in number. His early prints and negatives had been destroyed when the Kemendine house went up in flames; the work he’d done in Malaya was still at Morningside. All he possessed of his own work were a few pictures taken in Loikaw—of his mother, of Doh Say and Raymond and their families. Some of these he’d framed and hung on the walls of his apartment. He fought shy of inviting Ma Thin Thin Aye upstairs to see them. She was so young—more than ten years his junior. It mattered very much that she not think badly of him.