Smoke and Ashes

by Abir Mukherjee

  ‘Listen, honey,’ said Schmidt, ‘I’m not going home till I meet the prince.’

  The cordon of soldiers parted to allow the procession to pass, then closed ranks once more. The carriage came to a halt at the foot of the stairs and Prince Edward, in a medal-laden white dress uniform and pith helmet topped with enough ostrich feathers to fill half a dozen pillows, descended to cheers and a garland of flowers from a girl of about six.

  Out from the town hall filed a line of dignitaries, with the lieutenant governor at their head. Flanked by a couple of senior military men, the prince made his way up the stairs, shaking hands with the VIPs.

  ‘It looks like we’re staying, Sam,’ said Annie.

  The thought of so many innocents being gassed was unconscionable. That Annie might be one of them was more than I could stomach. I thought about physically carrying her out of there, but I doubted she’d have appreciated it. Schmidt, too, might have tried to intervene, and while that didn’t bother me, getting into a brawl in front of the Prince of Wales and a kilted detachment of the Black Watch seemed counterproductive. Even in uniform, it took a particularly determined Scotsman to knowingly avoid a fight. The only hope I had of averting disaster was to find Gurung.

  ‘If you won’t leave,’ I said, ‘promise me one thing. Stay inside the town hall until the crowds have dispersed. At the first sign of trouble, find a place to hide and stay there. I’ll come back for you.’

  I didn’t wait for a reply – she’d only have accused me of being melodramatic again. Instead I turned and ran towards the perimeter of sepoys, then headed for the Maidan.

  The crowds had grown twentyfold since I’d dropped off Surrender-not and the Maidan was now a sea of white, roaring with the sound of ten thousand voices. The soldiers were still there, looking on warily, but the futility of the task was clear. Trying to stop these men marching on the town hall was like trying to hold back the tide. You could do it, for a while, but in the end, you were going to drown. Close by stood a group of men in rolled-up shirtsleeves who had the look of sharks waiting for a feeding frenzy, and it didn’t take the flashbulbs and cameras on tripods to tell me that these were the gentlemen of the international press corps.

  As on the evening when Das had held his protest beside Howrah Bridge, a stage, bedecked with tricolours and a bank of tannoys, had been erected at one end. At present it was empty, though music was issuing from the loudspeakers, and while I didn’t understand the words, the strident, martial melodies suggested songs meant to stiffen the resolve.

  Finding Surrender-not in this melee would have proved difficult, had we not decided beforehand that it might be more efficient for him to try and find me. I was, after all, a white face in a sea of brown ones, and though it was hard finding a needle in a haystack, it was infinitesimally harder locating one particular blade of hay out of a whole bale.

  We’d agreed that I’d return by half past two and that I’d wait for him close to the stage. I made my way through the throng of men – and they were almost all men – towards the music, eliciting some curious looks on the way. It was hard to take in the good-naturedness of it all. Once more the sense of absurdity hit me: these men, born into bondage, seemed to bear no personal ill will towards me, a representative of the authority that made them second-class citizens in their own land. Indeed, I’d felt less safe walking down the Whitechapel Road of a Friday night in London than I did here.

  I reached the foot of the stage and searched the sea of faces for Surrender-not, and, a few minutes later, was relieved to see him emerge from the crowd and make his way over.

  ‘Did you find your father?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, deadpan. ‘He’s here with my eldest brother.’

  ‘The one who doesn’t like you?’

  ‘Neither of them likes me these days.’

  ‘I take it you didn’t manage to convince them to leave.’

  Surrender-not gave a curt shake of the head.

  ‘Did you tell them about the gas?’

  ‘Yes. They didn’t believe me. They asked where an Indian terrorist would obtain such a weapon and why he would use it in an area crowded with Indians.’

  ‘You did your best,’ I said and tried to mask the hollowness of my reassurance by offering him a cigarette. He took it and I lit his, and one for myself.

  ‘I hope your meeting with Lord Taggart was more fruitful,’ he said, taking a pull.

  ‘What do you think?’ I said. ‘Cancelling the prince’s reception at the town hall is out of the question. Taggart considered breaking up the little party here by force, but I stopped him.’

  Surrender-not looked at me curiously. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it would be the perfect opportunity for Gurung to set off his mustard gas and blame us.’

  ‘So our only hope is to find him in this crowd?’

  I took a drag of my cigarette and didn’t bother to reply.

  Several vehicles drew up on the road bordering the Maidan. The first was an open-topped car driven by an Indian and with three khaki-clad men of the Congress Volunteers seated in the rear. It was followed by a larger car, a black one with a fixed roof and curtained windows. An old lorry carrying a group of Volunteers brought up the rear. The vehicles mounted the pavement before making their way across the grass towards the assembled crowd, stopping close to the stage.

  The three passengers exited the lead vehicle, two heading for the stage, the other for the larger car with the curtained windows. Of the two heading for the stage, one was eminently familiar. There was no mistaking the bespectacled boyish features of Das’s assistant, Subhash Bose.

  ‘What the hell’s he doing here?’ I asked. ‘How’d he manage to get past our guards?’

  ‘You think the men of the Bhowanipore thana are impervious to bribes?’ asked Surrender-not.

  I looked to the troops gathered nearby. Their commanding officer, a young man with a tanned face and a lieutenant’s pips on his shoulders, looked as nervous as I felt. Bose was under the same rules of house arrest as Das, and his presence here could mean only one thing.

  The Congress Volunteers disembarked from their lorry and formed a line to the stairs leading up to the stage. The rear door of the black car opened and out stepped Das, dressed in a spotless white dhoti and chador. It was one thing for the officers to turn a blind eye to Bose slipping out from house arrest, quite another for them to let Das go too. That could cost them their livelihoods and earn a charge of dereliction of duty into the bargain. I doubted any of them would have been stupid enough to let that happen. It begged the question: how had the old man given his minders the slip? When I thought about it, though, I realised it mightn’t have been too hard. His home was the size of a city block with almost as many entrances and exits. It probably had a cellar too, and like the funeral parlour in Tangra, it was possible that it connected to other cellars. Das could have walked out right under the feet of his jailers.

  At the side of the field, the young lieutenant seemed unsure what to do, and his indecision appeared to be infecting his men. I’d hoped against hope that the passenger was someone else, but part of me knew it would be Das, and suddenly I realised that I’d known from the start – from the minute Taggart had called me into his office four days ago – that it would come to this. That it would fall to Surrender-not and me to arrest him. It was a scenario I’d wanted to avoid; not for my sake, but for Surrender-not’s. That he might have to arrest a man revered throughout Bengal, a man he referred to as uncle, would be a test I wasn’t sure he was up to.

  Das made for the stairs, shielded by the line of Volunteers. In the distance, the lieutenant still dithered.

  ‘Get out of here,’ I said to Surrender-not. ‘I need to stop this before things get out of hand.’

  He didn’t respond. Just stood there rooted like a statue.

  ‘I have to get Das off that stage before our army friends there do something rash. You can’t be any part of this. Now get going!’ I said it with a force an
d an urgency I hoped would shake him out of his vacillation.

  Surrender-not shook his head slowly, as though in a trance, ‘I can’t, Sam. Not while Gurung is still out there.’

  I didn’t have time to debate it with him. Instead I uttered a few choice words then told him to wait there as I pushed my way through the line of khaki and up the stairs. Das was now centre stage, standing at a microphone while Bose remained at the foot of the stairs. As I reached the platform, a chorus of jeers went up from the crowd as though I were the villain in some ridiculous pantomime. Das looked at me and smiled.

  ‘I am sorry, Captain Wyndham,’ he said. ‘I realise I must have caused you much aggravation. I hope you understand that my actions are dictated by moral necessity rather than any wish to create difficulties for you.’

  I could have told him that my actions too were dictated by moral necessity, the necessity to avert a potential bloodbath that might well leave him and his non-violent followers to suffer the most violent of deaths, but there was no point.

  ‘Mr Das,’ I said, ‘I am arresting you for breach of the terms of your house arrest. I cannot allow you to address the crowd.’

  The microphone in front of Das picked up and amplified my voice and suddenly the jeering grew louder.

  Das looked to Bose, then back to me. ‘If you arrest me, someone else will take my place,’ he said theatrically, to cheers from the crowd.

  ‘I’ll arrest anyone who addresses this crowd,’ I said.

  By now, the lieutenant and his troops had reached the stage, and accompanied by two of his men, he began climbing the steps.

  ‘Take this man into custody,’ I said. ‘Make sure you get him out of here safely.’

  The lieutenant probably had no idea who I was, but he seemed happy, even relieved, to follow my orders.

  Das held out his arms, like a prisoner waiting to be shackled. The noise of the crowd grew louder.

  ‘No handcuffs,’ I said to the lieutenant.

  Amid a cacophony of heckles from the ranks of his supporters, Das was led down the steps and towards the soldiers. I returned to where Surrender-not stood waiting. As they passed the black car, Das said something to one of his guards and the procession stopped. The door opened and a diminutive figure in a white sari stepped out.

  ‘Basanti Devi,’ gasped Surrender-not.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’

  I watched as she bent down and touched her husband’s feet, then rose, adjusted the aanchal of her sari so that it covered the back of her head, and slowly climbed the stairs to the stage, past the young lieutenant who stood there dumbstruck.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Surrender-not.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s going to speak,’ he said anxiously, ‘and you’ve just told the crowd we’ll arrest anyone who addresses them. If the army arrest her, we’re finished.’

  A wave of nausea passed through me as the full implication of the sergeant’s words hit home and I realised that Das had played me for a fool. Our taking his wife into custody was what he was banking on. Arresting him was one thing, but arresting his wife, a high-caste woman, and carting her off to jail was quite another. I couldn’t recall the last time a woman of high standing had been arrested in Calcutta. The crowd would be outraged, and, thanks to our friends in the press, word would spread across the city and the province and then the whole country. It was the sort of insult that was almost guaranteed to rekindle the flagging support for Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement. I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.

  By the time I regained my wits it was too late to stop her. Basanti Das had reached the microphone and a hush fell over the crowd. She began to speak in Bengali, her voice, amplified by the speakers, seemed to quiver at first but then she found her rhythm.

  ‘What’s she saying?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s telling them that Das has been arrested and that she intends to lead the march in his place. If she is arrested, they are to continue to the town hall and carry out a burning of foreign cloth.’

  A cheer went up from the throng, prompting the lieutenant to issue the order for her arrest. Two soldiers hurried back onto the stage and arrested her.

  For a minute confusion reigned. The crowd hurled insults at the soldiers, some of whom looked like they were still in their teens. I watched as they in turn gripped their rifles tighter, scared of what the protesters might do. Just as it looked like things might turn nasty, Bose climbed to the stage and calmed the crowd.

  ‘He’s telling them to remember Das’s words,’ said Surrender-not, without waiting for me to ask. ‘They are soldiers of peace. There must be no violence. He’s telling them to march on the town hall.’

  The crowd began to move like some great beast newly awakened and, with the Volunteers to the fore, headed in the direction of Red Road and the town hall.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Surrender-not and I went with them, weaving in and out of the crowd, frantically searching for anyone who bore even the slightest resemblance to Gurung. There was, of course, the possibility that the Gurkha had disguised himself, changed his features in some way, but Surrender-not thought that unlikely. He thought there was something about the way Gurung had carried himself, the way he’d talked when we’d encountered him the night before, that suggested he might find donning a physical disguise beneath his dignity. I pointed out that he’d disguised himself as a hospital porter to gain access to Nurse Rouvel’s dormitory and, more importantly, that in this instance, dignity would surely take second place to the desire to complete the mission he’d set himself.

  The arrest of Basanti Das had achieved the impact that her husband had no doubt been hoping for. Riled by her arrest, the crowd marched along Red Road shouting their slogans with a vigour I hadn’t seen since the early months of the non-cooperation campaign.

  The forward ranks of the Congress Volunteers reached Esplanade Row as the clocks struck four. The winter sun was already low in the sky as they and the thousands behind them reached the perimeter established by steel-helmeted troops blocking off access to the town hall.

  For the next five minutes there was a tense stand-off, with the Volunteers showing the same resolve and regimentation as the soldiers set against them. Behind them the crowds continued to shout their slogans of ‘British out’ and ‘Long live Gandhi-ji’ at a level that must have been clearly audible to the Prince of Wales and his audience through the open windows of the town hall.

  Those few hundred British and Anglo-Indians that hadn’t managed to make it into the hall, and had settled for listening to the prince from the lawns, were now torn between the speech being given inside and the uproar in the street. The young hotheads among them chose to confront the Indians.

  ‘The crowd is getting restless,’ Surrender-not shouted to me above the cacophony of voices. ‘At this rate there’ll be blood on the streets even before Gurung’s involvement.’

  He was right. Without Das to instil order, things were starting to spiral out of control.

  ‘Bose,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In the back of a police van on Red Road,’ said Surrender-not, gesturing over his shoulder. ‘They detained him as he came off the stage.’

  ‘Well, go and bloody un-detain him and bring him here,’ I shouted. ‘And hurry.’

  Surrender-not nodded and turned to fight his way back through the crowd. The weight of protesters now pressing against the front ranks was growing ever more intense and I realised the futility of the hope that I might spot Gurung in the melee. As it was, the density of the crowd meant that I couldn’t see anyone other than the five or six faces immediately around me. Gurung could have been standing two feet away and I wouldn’t have seen him. I needed a vantage point from where I’d be able to survey the throng.

  Fighting my way through to the military cordon, I showed my warrant card to one of the soldiers and negotiated ingress to the ring of steel. I ran to the town hall and up its steps. It wasn’t much altitude but it
was the best I could find.

  I turned and looked out over the sea of faces. If Gurung set off his mustard gas now, it would trigger a chain of events that couldn’t be stopped. Panic would set in and the crowd would stampede in all directions, including into the cordon of soldiers. They, in turn, would see the surge of bodies as an attack and open fire and only the Devil knew where things would go from there.

  From inside came the strains of the band striking up and soon the sound of hundreds of voices singing ‘God Save the King’ floated out. It meant the prince’s speech was over. He’d probably spend some minutes glad-handing selected dignitaries before exiting by the back door and being whisked off to Government House.

  The door behind me opened and Dawson walked out. He looked as though someone had hit him about the face with a damp rag.

  ‘What have you to report, Wyndham?’

  ‘Nothing good,’ I said. ‘Das tried to speak to the protesters on the Maidan. We arrested him.’

  ‘Das? How did he get out of his house?’

  ‘That’s irrelevant now,’ I said. ‘What matters is he brought his wife with him. When we arrested him, she tried to speak in his place. Your men arrested her too. The crowd didn’t like it. I doubt the rest of India will either when it’s in the papers tomorrow.’

  Dawson cursed. ‘The viceroy’ll be furious.’

  ‘Believe me,’ I said, ‘if that’s the worst news you have to give him today, then we’ll all be lucky.’

  ‘Gurung?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. ‘No sign of him.’

  The moment of maximum danger was fast approaching. When the prince left and his audience exited the building, no more than five feet from the crowds of protesters. It would be the moment of maximum vulnerability. The moment of maximum confusion. All at once I felt impotent, paralysed by the fear that I was about to fail: not just in my duty to protect the hundreds, maybe thousands of people of this city, both British and Indian, who were about to die; but more importantly, to Surrender-not, and to his father and brother; and especially to Annie. That would be a failure for which there could be no atonement or redemption.