by Kalyan Ray
Mr. Aherne saw my anxious look and shook his head. “We became friends instead. And Santimoy’s old grandfather, Ramkumar, nursed me back to life. I would otherwise have died of cholera. I can say I was reborn in that old house.”
I glanced up. There he was on the chart, Ramkumar Mitra, my grandfather’s grandfather. My head was swimming in time, and Baba’s familiar study had become an unfamiliar terrain.
But what had also registered on my heart was Neel’s quick rise to protect me, even from anything his grandfather uttered. I understood he did not know how to mention my parents, yet wanted to comfort me. He was mine to lean on.
“What happened?” I asked Mr. Aherne. Neel sat beside me, holding my hand, listening.
Chief Sandor Zuloff
Clairmont, New York
November 30, 1989
Through the open door of my office, I watched Delahanty, our rookie officer, dealing with a codger who had walked in half an hour ago, snarling about his missing car. I was waiting for any radio dispatches that might relate to the Thanksgiving Day homicides. We were fanning out the search wider for anything unusual in the area—not a good omen, I knew from experience. The closer to the location of the crime we got the leads, the better. I needed to keep my ears to the ground, but had heard nothing yet.
The man walked over to the counter again as soon as the clock showed ten o’clock. He leaned on it, tapping on the wood impatiently, his face gray and unshaven, eyes red-rimmed. He reeked of stale liquor and impatience.
“Wait a half hour, you said, and a half hour it’s been, see,” he hissed. “I’ll talk to your boss. See, it’s ten now.”
“Take a seat like I said,” returned young Delahanty curtly. “Chief’s busy right now.”
“Yeah?” The man was unfazed. “Two days it’s gone missing—I want someone to tell me something, for feck’s sake. I wanna see him right away, your Chief—whatsisname—yeah, Zulu.”
“Zuloff, Chief Zuloff,” said Delahanty.
“Zoo-whatever,” said the man. “My name’s Swint, Archie Swint. Car’s missing. Son’s made off with it,” adding under his breath, “sumuvabitch.” He scratched his cheek and examined his nails. “Heard anything yet?”
“About your son?”
“Feck my son. Just you find my car. Been two days now. I got my rights.”
Delahanty ignored him, rummaging through reports I told him to bring to me. I needed to see every last thing, anything at all, that happened in the last week. He followed me into my office and gave me a sheaf of papers. The clock edged on for another twenty minutes. I emerged, having reread the reports on that double homicide on Haddon for the hundredth time, and stood at my office door marked No Admittance. Delahanty was speaking on the phone, while Archie Swint fidgeted in his seat, his wife dozing beside him.
“Where’s it?” barked Archie Swint suddenly. His startled wife sat hugging herself, her eyes blinking uneasily under the fluorescent lamps. She flinched when her husband spoke, then slowly looked away, head lowered, clutching her bag to herself.
“Where?” rasped the man again. I turned my head to look at the man carefully.
“Car,” spat the man, pronouncing a as in cat, in his Upstate accent. “Where’s my damn car?”
“Keep a civil tongue,” I suggested. The man swiveled his glare at me, then crouched back, looking away, as if he had seen a larger dog. The woman shifted uneasily in her seat, drawing her knees together.
“What’s the report that just came in?” I asked Delahanty, under my breath as he rummaged through his papers.
“About the double homicide on Haddon?” he asked, looking up at me. “Nothing more so far, Chief.”
“That car,” I said.
“Oh yes, sir, came in this minute. Tony on patrol saw a blue car ditched pretty far into the woods—off the county road. He’s getting it towed. Maybe ten more minutes.”
“Here?” I asked Delahanty, and the young man nodded.
“Double-check if it’s his,” I told him.
“Plate numbers, sir?” Delahanty asked across the counter. The man stood up creakily, tugging at his baggy tartan shirt, adding under his breath, “About fecking time.”
“Plate?” asked Delahanty again, and the man spat out the number. His wife mumbled inaudibly.
“Being towed here any minute now,” Delahanty told him. “It’s pretty banged up. You’ll have to pay the tow truck.”
“Sumavabitch, I knew it,” Swint snarled at his wife and rushed for the door, leaving her behind. Delahanty called after him, “You’ll have to fill out this form, and I’ll need to see the registration.”
“She got all that, it’s in her name,” said Swint, gesturing backward with his thumb, as he barreled through the door, leaving it open behind him, letting in the chilly air. The woman stayed, lost in her thoughts.
“Ma’am,” the young officer called her. As she shuffled over to the counter, her handbag fell open. “Oh,” she said, bewildered and stooping, her scared eyes blue with hardly any lashes. The young man came around the counter and helped her pick up her things. “Thank you,” she kept muttering, “thank you, thank you . . .” A hair-snarled brush, a lidless lipstick, some soiled peppermints, hairpins, a frayed change purse. She struggled to read his nametag.
“Delahanty, ma’am, Bill Delahanty,” he said to her.
“Why, Billy’s my son’s name too!” Her lipstick had seeped into the fissures around her smiling lips. Officer Delahanty felt protective of her. “He the one took your car?”
“Yes,” she said, dropping her gaze. “He asked us, didn’t he? It’s not like you think.”
“I’ll just need you to fill out this form, Mrs. Swint,” he said gently, helping her put everything back in her handbag. “And, yeah, I’ll need your registration. Is it in the car?”
“What?” She looked up vaguely.
“Your car registration, ma’am,” he reminded her. “You need to fill this out.”
“Oh yes, yes, I have it here,” she said, fishing it out after a while. “I forgot my reading glasses. I won’t be able to write,” she confessed humbly.
“Can you sign without them?” asked Delahanty.
“Oh yes, yes,” she said eagerly, “I can also read most of it if I hold the paper like so,” she added, holding it at arm’s length.
“That’s good,” said Delahanty, smiling back. “You tell me the details and I’ll fill it out, okay? Then you sign it, and we’re done.”
She nodded and handed him the form. Officer Delahanty noticed that her fingers were swollen, and her rings, a thin wedding band and a beautiful solitaire diamond ring, looked embedded.
“Lovely ring, ma’am,” he said, companionably.
“Eh?” she said, momentarily confused, then added animatedly, “Oh yes, that’s my grandmother’s ring. It has her and Grandpa’s names inscribed inside. I never saw Grandpa, but Grandma left me her ring when she passed on.” Officer Delahanty went on filling out the form, and she answered him absently, looking at her ring.
“There’s a mistake here, ma’am,” said Delahanty, looking at Mrs. Swint’s car registration. “The address on this doesn’t match the one you gave earlier.”
“What?” she repeated, “what address?” growing flustered at being brought back to the present.
“You said 166 Haddon Lane, but it says different here on your registration.”
I listened, still as a hunter who has heard a rustle.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Swint sadly. “I’m sorry. I got to thinking of the ring and the house Daddy left me, didn’t I? We used to live there. My son, Billy, loved it. It had a tree with lovely flowers in the backyard. And rhododendrons. He’s a good boy. I have his picture from high school, I do,” she said, fumbling about and finding it in her bag. She handed it to Officer Delahanty. “His name is Billy too,” she repeated, smiling at him.
“Where does he live, Mrs. Swint?” I asked. Officer Delahanty looked quizzically at me. He had no idea that I had been list
ening. She had become pensive.
“Ma’am, where is your son, Billy?” I asked again.
Mrs. Swint looked close to tears, her face pale with shame. “I—I d-don’t know.”
She signed the papers like a blind person and proceeded to leave. Officer Delahanty caught up with her at the door, giving her a copy of what she had signed. She put it in her bag without glancing at it. It hung open again, its clasp undone. She clutched at the banister and began to step down gingerly, one step at a time.
“One sixty-six Haddon Lane,” I whispered to myself, picking up the creased photograph from the table; I had not returned it. “Where are you right now, Billy Swint?” I thought, before I put it in my pocket.
I was in a trout stream now, knowing I was about to reel in the line.
Devika
Clairmont, New York
November 30, 1989
In the study, the light from the open window caught the picture of the old mansion sideways, and reflected on it, I could see the outline of Mr. Aherne’s thoughtful face over the the India-ink lines and painted pillars of that long-ago house in Barisal, in a land abandoned by my grandfather, whose real name I had now come to know.
I wondered now if my father thought often about his dead sibling, Laub, whom we had never discussed, though I knew about him. There was so much about the past, about my own parents, I did not know, about all that broke or shaped my family.
Mr. Aherne’s old leather suitcase lay open at his feet. I could imagine him packing it carefully by himself in another old house, in Calcutta. I had a feeling that these were the only clothes he owned. I could see his neatly folded shirts, alongside two carefullly rolled ties, and underneath, three silver-framed pictures. One was his own wedding photograph, black-and-white, which he handed to me when he saw me looking. He had his arms around his wife. They were both smiling into the camera, she in a sari, standing outside the marriage registrar’s office, the sign visible. The second picture, in color, showed Neel’s mother when she was about ten, all three sitting under a multicolored umbrella. Behind them sparkled the sea. I noticed the strong family resemblance between the father and the young daughter—and Neel—and wondered for the first time whom my child would resemble.
“Can I make a copy of this picture?” I asked impulsively.
“It’s your turn to keep the original. Give me a copy when you can.” He handed me the picture, frame and all.
The last picture, in black-and-white, was of some other woman, cut from an old glossy magazine—but I recognized the face immediately: Merle Oberon. I knew her from Wuthering Heights, Baba’s favorite film—based on my favorite book. Baba had a black-and-white videocassette which we had watched many times.
“Why do you have her picture in a frame?” I asked him, unable to curb my curiosity.
He shook his head and said, “Another day.”
“Actually, Grandpa, you never did tell me either,” protested Neel.
“Another day,” he repeated, “I will, I promise you both.” Then he took out a long cloth packet, carefully wrapped in a length of faded silk.
“And what is this?” I asked.
“This I will tell you today,” he said, getting to his feet. “May I put that picture on the wall on this coffee table?”
“By all means, Mr. Aherne. Bring the house down.”
They smiled at my words, and I was surprised that I could smile again. I remembered how Baba and I would sit and chat about all things on earth and laugh at the silly jokes we made. It cheered me to remember those times, and that Neel was here with me now. He helped his grandfather take down the large picture and set it down carefully on the table, before they sat on either side of me, looking down at it.
Mr. Aherne unwrapped the silk and took out an old envelope which once had a red wax seal, now faded and crumbling.
“An old letter?” I said in anticipation. “Is it about my grandfathers Santimoy and Monimoy? After what you told me, I don’t know what names to use to tell them apart!”
“No, Devi,” explained Mr. Aherne, “it’s not about them. It is from an earlier time. I brought it along because I thought it time for me to hand it over.” Neel held my hand, and I sensed that reading this old letter on occasion must have been his family tradition.
“You are part of this,” said Mr. Aherne, discerning my thoughts. “You and Neel and your child are very much a part of this letter written by my grandfather Padraig Aherne, who had come somehow to India, and your ancestor Doorgadass Mitra, the merchant prince, saved him from being executed by the East India Company.
“Did you know that Ramkumar had been given up for dead,” said Mr. Aherne, “left by the river according to ancient custom? It used to be called antarjali jatra—journey into the water. No longer practiced, thank God. My grandfather Padraig revived Ramkumar. Without these two persons, there would have been none of us.” He looked around the table, and continued. “Ramkumar gave me this letter, written to your ancestor Baboo Doorgadass Mitra.”
Baba should be here, I thought, with a catch in my throat, imagining Ammu and him sitting here. Neel draped one arm over my shoulder, and he knew what I was thinking.
Mr. Aherne was laying the pages one by one on the picture of the old mansion. The sheets looked frail and aged, and the black ink of the script on the brittle paper showed edges of red: So like Mr. Robert Aherne himself and his reddish hair, I mused.
“I thought I’d bring the picture of the mansion here, and put the letter on it, for I saw it first in Barisal,” he said. I nodded in agreement.
“From now on you and Neel are going to be the keepers of this letter,” Grandpa Robert said. Yes, that was what I would call him, I decided. He sat back, looking at us, letting the stories of his life flow into ours. I imagined our families gathering in the shadows, unseen but present all around us.
I thought of the story Baba told me once, remembered from the lost land of his childhood. Someone there had told him of a great and timeless tree—the Sidrat al-Muntaha in Paradise: For each birth the tree sprouts a new leaf. When a person dies on earth, it falls, but before it reaches the ground, an angel of Life flies to gather it for a celestial book, made of innumerable leaves. Each leaf, with its parting veins of doubts and reconciliations, green forever in that great Book of Names.
We read each page together, Neel and I, our heads touching, the picture of the great house under us, revealing different parts of itself as we lifted successive pages, our reading holding us together in no country I could name. We were in India, Ireland, and America, all together.
Afterword and Acknowledgments
My debts of gratitude are many, beginning with my grandfather, Kumud Bhushan Ray, visionary, builder of railway bridges, and avid Tibetan scholar, in whose library I had free rein, where he taught me the alphabets of three languages and told me stories until the day he died, my childhood ended, and the library sold off soon after by his sons; Fr. G. K. Carlson of the Society of Jesus, who fed me wonderful books and daring ideas in the otherwise sterile school years; Amal Bhattacharji at Presidency College, who ignored the plodding syllabi and swept me through Dante in the first great travel of my life; A. N. Kaul, at Delhi University, and Brijraj Singh, who was my mentor and colleague when I began to teach at St. Stephen’s College in Delhi. I was enriched by the numerous chats over poems and novels and bad English department coffee in Rochester, New York, with George Ford and Anthony Hecht, who taught me that the rigours of prose were no less than those of poetry.
To the numerous books of history, memoirs, and journals that I used in my novel, my debt is incalculable. Just a small sampling will suggest the deep soil in which I planted my branching story of the various diaspora, identity, and hybridity. I found Cecil Woodham-Smith’s The Great Hunger a marvelous starting point; her insights are unfailingly sharp and clear. These were balanced by Thomas Campbell Foster, Letters on the Condition of the People of Ireland (1846), Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland by W. E. H. Lecky, De Beaumont’s Ire
land (1839), T. W. Freeman’s Pre-Famine Ireland, and Liam O’Flaherty’s novels. Nassau Senior’s nineteenth-century oeuvre Journals, Conversations and Essays Relating to Ireland was full of information, as were Edward Wakefield’s Ireland: Statistical and Political (1812 Vol. I), Sir Charles Trevelyan’s The Irish Crisis reprinted in Edinburgh Review (1850), and Sir George Nicholls’s A History of the Irish Poor Law (1856). I ploughed through Alfred Smee’s The Potato Plant, Its Uses and Properties (1846) for an insight into contemporary understanding of the problem. An earlier work, Arthur Young’s A Tour in Ireland (1780), made for compelling reading. This is just a small sampling of what became a much larger bibliography.
For a period of six months, before writing the Ireland segment of my novel, I immersed myself in reading contemporary journals from the 1840s, such publications as Freemen’s Journal; Nation, which was founded in 1842 by Daniel O’Connell himself; The Times of London, which had not yet spawned its many namesakes in various parts of the world; The Famine in the Land (1847), written by Isaac Butt, who was a friend of W. B. Yeats’s father; Sir Robert Peel’s Memoirs (1856); W. J. Fitzpatrick’s Correspondence of Daniel O’Connell; and a veritable pile of contemporary pamphlets and posters. Later historical research often corrected contemporary perceptions of events, but I needed to keep in mind that for a novelist, the first reactions, even rumours—especially early rumours—are of prime value and must dye the tempera of the narrative.
I spent many hours, often with a magnifying glass in hand, peering into Victorian-era cityscapes of Dublin and, like Brendan Aherne, at Irish landscapes of that period. So I did at photographic archives of Bengal in general, and Calcutta in particular, for use in the later segments of my novel. I mourn the destruction by fire of the extensive and irreplaceable photo archives of Bourne & Shepherd in Calcutta, parts of which I had the good fortune to look at years ago.