A Play for the End of the World

by Jai Chakrabarti

  Those empty pages began to haunt him. He forced himself to remember moments of joy—from the early days at the docks; earlier, at the orphanage, before the war began in earnest—but even those moments came unmoored from their bliss.

  It was the beat of his Ukrainian landlady’s towel washing, the violence with which she pummeled the towels against the bathtub, that finally roused him.

  The traffic Sunday-subdued and the washing finished, there was almost silence. Except for the hum of his answering machine, which had been calling to him all this time. He pressed Play with his big toe. Five messages, all Lucy. The last one: “Jaryk, honey, I’m coming over. I’m coming over, whether you like it or not. I’m bringing beer, and we’ll watch Here’s Lucy on TV.”

  It seemed to him the greatest missive of love, frightening in its boldness, impossible to claim.

  * * *

  ………………

  Later that morning, through the bars of his cell, he saw a young man dressed in a paisley shirt and dark slacks brought into the room next to his. Two guards he’d seen before were leading him by the elbows. For a moment, they locked eyes. The man called out, “Hello, you there—can you help me?”

  The guards pushed their charge into the cell next to his. “Don’t mind,” one said to Jaryk.

  When the door to the adjacent cell was shut, he heard the rapping of a baton against steel. A rapid conversation in Bengali. “They have imprisoned me wrongly!” cried the man.

  Then baton struck flesh, the dull thud of bone. It had been years, but Jaryk knew that sound from the work of the black boots. Instinctively, he started to yell. At first the sounds that came out seemed closer to country Polish, and he had to focus to enunciate in English, “Stop, stop right now!”

  More whispered Bengali. The panting of the youth through the walls began to ease. One of the guards came to Jaryk’s cell and smiled. “No worry, sir. That one is Naxalite. He was found making bombs. Many apologies for disturbance.”

  Jaryk gripped the bars of his cell, tried to peer into the next one. He couldn’t hear the young man anymore. “I thought this was a military hospital, not a prison. I need to make a call. I need to get out of here.”

  “Certainly, sir. Use of phone is permitted. Let me get deputy.”

  Almost an hour passed before the deputy came to retrieve Jaryk. Now, there was no one in the cell next to his, only a spot of blood by the latrine. “What happened to the man you brought? Where did he go?”

  “I am not knowing, sir,” the deputy said. “So many pass through, it is hard to remember each.”

  He tried to call the professor that morning, but the professor was out, his butler said. The incident with the accused bomb maker had unsettled Jaryk. He was being lied to, treated as if he were a child. Still, his purpose was to retrieve Misha’s remains; he didn’t want to become entangled in a guerrilla war. He tried the professor again. Again, the butler chided him, “No professor. Call later, maybe.”

  Aside from the Bose estate, the only other number he had was the Pals’. He reached them on his fourth attempt that morning. Mrs. Pal answered the phone in a voice deeper, more sonorous than he remembered it.

  “This is Jaryk, your houseguest,” he said, terrified that she’d forgotten him, though their encounter was only a day removed. Perhaps his endeavors to contact them amounted to no more than a foreigner’s foolishness.

  When she answered, “How is your sunburn?” he felt grateful for the goodness of strangers. The poultice Mrs. Pal’s children had spread on his arms had helped mitigate the painful spots of red into manageable rings of suntan. “Much improved,” he said. “But I’m calling because I need your help, your husband’s help, with an urgent matter.”

  “I’m afraid he’s out at the moment, ferrying guests. Why don’t you tell me what you need?”

  He explained his predicament in a way he hoped didn’t sound desperate. A minor cut above the eye, he said, earned from a hasty move at an intersection. He shared the fact that his bicycle had been removed from him and that he was now in a state of virtual custody, a crimeless prisoner. “They are saying it’s to protect me from the troublemakers, but I know nothing about that.

  “I need your help to get to Shantiniketan. You’re the only people I know here.”

  There was a pause before Mrs. Pal answered, perhaps even a susurration on the line, during which he feared he would be left alone, the sequence of his days in India spent winnowing from the holding room to the switchboard to the grounds, becoming over time no different than the other prisoners; but Mrs. Pal said at last, “You know, as a child I traveled to Shantiniketan. We would learn about the flora and fauna.

  “Stay put. We shall come to get you.” Then, continuing in her agreeable tone, “For West Bengal touring, my husband charges forty-five rupees a day.”

  He was relieved, not only that they had agreed to save him from his sequester. but that he would reciprocate in a familiar way.

  * * *

  ………………

  At three o’clock that afternoon, Mr. Pal arrived, wearing a three-piece suit. Jaryk found the outfit to be poorly chosen for the weather and ill-fitting to boot—Mr. Pal’s belly testing the vest buttons and his slim forearms poking out from the sleeves—but the garment seemed to confer importance: constables saluted, tea was ordered, and a tour of the premises readily offered.

  “Not presently,” Mr. Pal said. He spoke to the constables in English and to the ranking officers in Bengali. There was a mélange of forms to fill, all the more, it seemed, because the deputy and his deputy were away for tea and proper authorizations were required for Jaryk’s transfer into the free world. This was all handled by Mr. Pal, who balanced his teacup on the flat of his palm and spoke about his time traveling the north of England. Afterwards, a group of deferential policemen led them back to his cell.

  “You were pretending to be someone,” Jaryk said, as he collected his things.

  “Only the chief inspector of military hospitals,” Mr. Pal said. “And a childhood friend of the venerable Mrs. Gandhi. Nowadays, some of these institutions have been converted into prisons. I’m pleased you received care for your wound, though not so pleased you got that care here.”

  A few blocks from the hospital, they came upon Mr. Pal’s white Ambassador, where in the backseat Avik and Priya were fanning their mother. Jaryk hadn’t been expecting the entire family and was unprepared for Avik running from the car and into his arms for a sizable hug, but he responded as casually as he knew how; he patted Avik’s head lightly and extended his hand to Mrs. Pal.

  “Avik and Priya have never been to Shantiniketan,” Mrs. Pal said, as if it were for their benefit that he’d solicited their services and chosen the remotest of towns.

  * * *

  ………………

  On the road, Jaryk soon found that all four of the Pals were great debaters; even the youngest one, Avik, had no problems taking arguments apart. The taxi had just gotten out of the city and onto a country path when the conversation turned fiery. One moment, Priya was explaining how she’d learned about the invention of the zero—a discovery of the Indus Valley, she said—when her father clucked his tongue and praised the Egyptians for the same numerological feat. “But Papa,” Priya said, “zero is ours.” She had the limitless confidence of an eight-year-old raised in a house of love. Even though her brother, two years younger, was chorusing her father’s words, she fought back with the rhetoric of her teacher. Jaryk smiled, a little perplexed at the zeal, and caught Mrs. Pal’s eye in the side mirror—she was looking at him with intent, weighing him as if he were one of the prized bluefins Misha would show at the docks. “So, what about this Tagore play?” she asked him. “Why such an interest for you?”

  “So many stories are about how you should live your life,” Jaryk said. “But this one is about how you should die.”

  “Oh,
that is morbid,” said Mrs. Pal.

  “Not at all, Aditi,” countered Mr. Pal. “On the contrary, thinking about your own death can feel like a spring shower, a little enlivening, actually.”

  “Don’t go on, Mr. Pal, not in front of the children.”

  They let the matter drop. On both sides of the road villages emerged: women balanced enormous bales of hay on their heads, saris brightened in shales of sunlight, hips moved along with the sway of the rice crop, men prodded the bullocks, and the great beasts, the engines of toil, sniffed the humid air and rejoined their work. Since he had settled in New York, Jaryk had rarely seen the countryside. Here it was—plainspoken, untendered.

  “The problem with India is its traffic system,” Mr. Pal said. Beyond the bend a shepherd was leading his thirty or forty sheep, and though Mr. Pal honked, neither the shepherd nor his sheep moved off the road. Mr. Pal eased the car close to the shepherd, and the two men spoke as the taxi rolled along.

  “Is it always like this?” Jaryk asked Mrs. Pal.

  “They feel they own the countryside,” she said. “But shouldn’t they?”

  “The shepherd informs that it can’t be helped,” Mr. Pal said. “All the roads are filled with the protesters, this one included. Even if I pass him, in one kilometer I’ll run into a line of angry youth.”

  Angry youth. Were these the ones Misha had championed, the ones who wanted to reclaim land from the rich—to make something their own? Perhaps these protesters included the family of the man who’d ended up in the cell next to his.

  “Some of them land in that fancy military hospital you found yourself in,” said Mr. Pal, as if following his thoughts. “But know that our protests are as numerous as our collections of poetry. The shepherd says this particular is one of the last throes of the Red Army. In the last few years not only did communism become religion in the villages, we also had people fleeing across the border. Because the two Pakistans had a war, we now have a new country that both despises and adores us. Now all Bangladeshi Hindus want to come and live here. Like the Commies, they want land. They want equal treatment. But who says they get what they want?”

  “We are all immigrants,” Mrs. Pal said. “So don’t be a bigot.”

  “Be that as it may, there is also the Indira factor,” Mr. Pal said. “We are all tragically in love with her.”

  Indira Gandhi, Mrs. Pal went on to explain, had won the national elections with convincing force. She had supported the creation of Bangladesh, and in so doing had opposed not only the archenemy Pakistan but also its main ally, the United States.

  “Your commander in chief, Mr. Nixon, was so gracious to send the USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal. Just so the sailors on the ship could get some sun, one supposes.” But Indira Gandhi wasn’t deterred, Mrs. Pal said. She called Nixon’s bluff and sent Indian troops deep into the heart of East Pakistan, and when they returned home, the land they’d fought for was hailed as Bangladesh. The Iron Lady facing down the greatest nation on Earth. When Mrs. Gandhi was seen in Calcutta with the newly crowned prime minister of the newly minted Bangladesh, the nation and the state of West Bengal cheered.

  “Anyway, Indira’s predecessors mostly ousted the Naxalites,” Mrs. Pal said. “The left-wing peoples who stirred up a great deal of trouble. For the last few years, every day two or three college-educated young men were making political parties.”

  “And making bombs,” Mr. Pal added. “Thank your gods that part has been restrained.”

  Mr. Pal slipped the car into neutral to roll down a hill, so close to the sheep that Jaryk inhaled their grassy smell. He noticed that a couple of them had coats with burn marks and that one of them had a thickened scar where an ear should’ve been. He pointed this out to Mr. Pal, who said the shepherd had already explained.

  “The flock lived close to a gang of graduates who made bombs in a shed. Bombs they intended to use in the city proper. Against the police and the government. One went off accidentally and took that poor fellow’s ear.”

  The earless sheep, as if knowing it was being observed, trotted off the road, and the shepherd, cursing his luck, followed. Everywhere, unhappy young men were breaking things. Even in America, the old regime was in trouble. The trick, wherever you were, was to keep your head low to the ground, to listen, but then to move on. It wasn’t always enough, though. Sometimes the black boots did their dirty work in front of you. Then, you couldn’t look away; you couldn’t unsee.

  * * *

  ………………

  They arrived at the Bose estate as the sun was beginning to set. Seeing no one around, Jaryk opened the byzantine gates himself, and the Pals’ Ambassador rolled in. There was a grand foyer from which, he imagined, countless guests had been whisked into the thick of the mansion’s many soirées, for it was a house that was meant to host lavish colonial engagements, evidenced by the gargoyles carved into the gates and the wide verandas that looked onto fields of wheat. Now a piece of the veranda had crumbled, and one of the long-toothed gargoyles was a little less of tooth. The new masters weren’t so keen on appearances as the old. The professor had told Jaryk a little of his inheritance at Seven and a Half Dimes, but it had seemed too theoretical then to absorb the particulars.

  As he walked toward the back, he could hear music from the courtyard. Someone all in white was playing a row of bells strung on a large walnut tree as if it were a dulcimer, hammering lightly on the limbs to make music that carried in the wind.

  “Hello,” Jaryk called, but the man continued playing.

  Mr. Pal sidled up beside Jaryk. “Judging by the prayer mark on his forehead, I believe that is the priest who visits this place. Better not to interrupt the fellow.”

  “I’ll look for the professor.” Jaryk tried the door to the house from the courtyard and found it open. What first caught his eye was a beautiful piano, which even in a room of dusty effects remained well polished, consuming its own light, and he thought of Lucy, her hands that knew Bach and Schubert by heart. Would she ever take up the instrument again, or would the city consume her with its busyness—its belief that there was always something more important to work for, just around the corner?

  He saw then that a man in an indigo blue shirt was sleeping under that grand piano, his snores covering the song the priest made on the bells. Hoping he’d have a clue to the professor’s whereabouts, Jaryk shook the man awake.

  “Thief!” the man cried, followed by a long stream of Bengali.

  Mr. Pal wobbled into the room, followed by his two sleepy children and his wide-eyed wife. “What in the heavens?”

  “Thief!” the man repeated.

  Mr. Pal calmed the man down, who it turned out—despite the lack of uniform—was the butler, gone down in his favorite spot for a late siesta. They weren’t expecting Jaryk or the Pals, but the professor, the butler informed them, was practicing music upstairs. If Rudra Bose would have them, the butler said, hands on hips, then they would need to arrange their own dinners. “He says he is a butler, not a cook,” Mrs. Pal offered, finishing the translation.

  “No problem,” Jaryk said. “I can go without dinner.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Mrs. Pal said.

  Jaryk took a spiral staircase up to the third floor, following the sound of a flute. The melody stopped as soon as he entered the professor’s study, where he found Rudra Bose behind a large mahogany desk, every square inch of which was covered by books and clippings.

  “Welcome, Mr. Smith,” he said, setting his flute down on the mess of his desk. “I am so glad you have found us, even if it is under the most difficult of circumstances.” When they’d met in Manhattan, Rudra Bose had been attired in a stiff suit, his golden cufflinks catching the dim light of Seven and a Half Dimes, his nervous energy attracting the bartender’s scorn. Now he was in an Indian shirt, his hair oiled back, but his fingernails, chewed to their ends, betrayed a hidden fl
uster.

  “Thank you for arranging my travel,” Jaryk said.

  “Of course. My deepest condolences for your loss,” said the professor. “You know, Misha and I met almost every week when I was teaching at Columbia. We became friends. He talked about you all the time. Even when he arrived here, he’d tell me tales from your childhood in the orphanage. He was convinced you were on your way, on the next plane here. In the end, I suppose he was right.”

  How strange that this man and his oldest friend had broken bread together, Jaryk thought. How strange that while he’d been falling in love Misha had found a new companion: a bookmonger with oily hair and long, womanish lashes. He probably had soft hands, too, which Misha definitely did not. But Misha had loved to learn about the world. Once for his birthday he had bought Jaryk an engraved copy of One Thousand and One Nights, which he’d only skimmed, and which Lucy ultimately took back to her own apartment.

  “I’d like to see how he spent his days here. I’d like to see his things,” Jaryk said. “Anything he left behind.”

  “Tomorrow, I’ll show you how he spent his days. But now follow me, and you’ll see where he kept his things.” The professor led Jaryk down to the second floor. They passed several rooms where all the furniture was draped in sheets, evidence of a larger life now covered away.

  “This was his,” said the professor, stopping at a room with a bay window that faced west, the sunset laying its colors on the plain blue sheets of Misha’s last bed.

  “He was cremated in the village, but I brought his ashes back,” said the professor pointing to a brass urn. Jaryk tested its weight and imagined for a moment that the heft came not from the metal but from whatever Misha had left of his body in this world. He would never have wanted cremation for his friend. The ignominy of it still bothered him. “At least he passed in his sleep,” Jaryk said.