by Amitav Ghosh
But always impassive, never betraying so much as a trace of emotion. Perhaps, said Balaram, ruminating, I could try massaging him on the occipital bone where the emotions and sentiments are.
Balaram! Gopal exclaimed. You leave his occipital bone or whatever alone. You’re imagining things. Toru told me herself when we were last in Lalpukur that he’s had trouble in school because of his devotion to you. That’s an emotion. Gopal put his glass of water down and looked accusingly at Balaram. Balaram nodded reluctantly.
Once, on his way out of the school in the afternoon, Balaram heard shouts and wild laughter in a classroom. He stopped, for the school was meant to be empty at that time of the afternoon. It was soon apparent that the noise was coming from his own classroom. As he was walking back, it grew from scattered shouts into a high-pitched schoolboy chant: Balaram’s dog, Balaram’s dog …
The boys in the classroom scattered as soon as he entered. He saw four of Bhudeb Roy’s sons tumbling out of the windows. But the fifth, a squat, paunchy boy with a sprouting moustache, stood his ground in the middle of a pile of overturned benches and looked straight at him, with a curling smile. Then he turned and sauntered out of the room, whistling. Balaram saw that he had a deep gash across his cheek.
Then Balaram saw Alu, sprawled on the floor, tied to an upturned bench. His chin had split open and his nose was dripping blood. Balaram had to cut him free with a blade. As they came out of the school, Balaram heard a shout: Balaram’s dog – follow him home. He turned, but all he saw was a flash of feet disappearing into the bamboo.
But, said Balaram, the strange thing was that even then he didn’t say a word. He didn’t cry or even complain. The whole thing seemed to have no effect on him at all.
Maybe, said Gopal meditatively, maybe he’s still trying to get over the shock of losing his parents.
Balaram dropped his kebab in astonishment. He stared at Gopal. I hadn’t thought of that, he said at last.
No, said Gopal. You wouldn’t.
When Balaram got back to Lalpukur that evening, Alu was sitting in a corner of his study reading. Once he was comfortably settled in his easy chair, Balaram called out to him. Alu came up to him and proffered his skull. He was a little puzzled because it was Sunday, and a holiday.
No, said Balaram, not today. He patted the arm of his chair, and Alu jumped on to it.
Alu, said Balaram shyly, one mustn’t brood on the past. One ought to think of the future. The future is what is important. The past doesn’t matter. One can do anything with the future. One can change the world.
He scanned the boy’s face. Alu, he said, don’t you want to change the world? The boy looked at him steadily, his eyes larger than ever, saying nothing.
How can one change the world, Balaram said, if one has no passion?
The boy did not respond. Suddenly Balaram felt himself strangely touched by the boy’s wide-eyed silence. He felt his throat constrict, and in embarrassment he reached for the copy of Vallery-Radot’s Life of Pasteur which always lay beside his chair, and began to read him the chapter about that turning-point in the history of the world – 6 July 1885 – when Louis Pasteur took his courage in his hands and at the risk of his reputation and his whole professional life (for he had never lacked for enemies) filled a Pravoz syringe and inoculated poor, hopeless ten-year-old Joseph Meister, only that day savaged by a rabid dog, with his still untested vaccine.
When he stopped and put the book down he saw tears in Alu’s eyes.
Perhaps I was wrong, Balaram said to Gopal a week later. Perhaps his occipital bone is all right. Still, I must make sure.
He never did make sure. He forgot for a few days, and after that he couldn’t have even if he had remembered. But by then he would probably not have thought it necessary anyway.
That was the week of the autumn harvest. Bhudeb Roy, who had planted a new high-yielding seed, had a magnificent harvest that year. It was a very cheap harvest, too, for three classes of schoolboys did most of his harvesting, on pain of being failed in their examinations. There was a good reason for it, he explained, when Balaram protested feebly. It was a part of the botany practicals – the Lalpukur school had always believed in a judicious mixture of practical and theoretical knowledge.
Otherwise, too, it was a good year for Bhudeb Roy. He didn’t have to spend any money on the school’s annual prizegiving because his five sons shared the prizes between them. He had had another son, and this time the astrologers were quite encouraging.
So good was his fortune that a twinge of superstition led him to announce to the school that in thanksgiving he – in other words, the school – would hold an exceptionally lavish Saraswati Puja that year. What could be a more appropriate festival for a school than that of the Goddess of Learning?
But, Balaram discovered, Bhudeb Roy’s motives were not wholly spiritual. He also intended to invite and suitably impress the district’s Inspector of Schools. If he was successful, anything was possible – a grant, an appointment …
And so Bhudeb Roy set about organizing his triumphal feast. A six-foot image of Ma Saraswati, with spinning electric lights behind the eyes and a silver-foil halo, was commissioned in Naboganj, the nearest large town. Bolai-da, who had once been on a kitchen detail in the Army, closed down his cycle-shop and took charge of the cooking. Two goats and a pondful of fish were fattened for the feast. A large multi-coloured tent, with a low platform for the image, was erected in the schoolyard, and the most learned pandit in Naboganj was hired to preside over the ceremony.
So splendid were the preparations that Bhudeb Roy did not have the heart to restrict his special invitations to the Inspector of Schools. Eventually he sent invitations to all the important officials in the district: the District Magistrate, the Superintendent of Police, and even the Block Development Officer. He had a vision of a sparkling row of official jeeps parked outside the school.
Of course, he had to invite Balaram, too, for the sake of propriety (and the Inspector of Schools was bound to ask to meet the other teachers in the school).
Bhudeb Roy was a little disappointed when the day came. Only the Inspector of Schools arrived, and that, too, by bus and covered with dust. But by then he was enjoying himself too much to let a minor reverse upset him unduly. He showed the Inspector of Schools to a special chair and busied himself herding cowering groups of scrubbed schoolboys into the tent. His five sons, who had been armed with bamboo poles for the occasion, were equally busy outside, keeping the villagers – all but an approved few – out.
When the lights were switched on, a few people noticed that Ma Saraswati, usually so serenely beautiful, seated on her white swan, with her eight-stringed veena in one hand and a book in the other, looked a little pained. But no one dared say anything and, in any case, in all that bustle no one had time to give it much thought.
Balaram left his house late. Toru-debi was busy with a new design for seamless petticoats, and she had flatly refused to go. Balaram had no wish to go, either, or so he said, but duty prodded and he had had no alternative but to respond.
The ceremony had started when he arrived at the school. Standing outside the tent, he could hear the pandit droning inside. He took a deep breath and stepped in.
For a breathless moment he stood frozen, his eyes riveted to the image. Then he raised his hand and shouted: Wait!
The startled pandit stopped in mid-mantra, his mouth open. In the crackling silence everybody turned and followed his pointing fingers to Ma Saraswati’s head, brightly lit from the inside. There was no denying that she looked distinctly migrained. (It was simple really: Bhudeb Roy, unable to resist the temptation to save a few paise, had refused to pay for special insulation for the lights inside the image’s head, and as a result the clay had buckled when the lights were switched on.)
But everybody’s eyes were on Balaram now. He shouted again: Wait! Then he ran across the tent and, with dirty, defiling sandals still on his feet, he leapt on to the platform. The pandit fainted awa
y from shock.
Balaram paused for a moment, his hand poised over the image’s head. Then he ripped the dyed cotton hair off the head and laid the clay skull bare. He pointed to the peeled head with the light still bravely flickering inside and turned around. This, he said to the electrified crowd, is not Saraswati.
This is not Learning, he said, knocking the clay with his knuckles. This is Vanity.
The scraping of the Inspector of Schools’ chair tore through the silence. He stalked out without so much as a glance at Bhudeb Roy. Bhudeb Roy called off the ceremony, and people said that he didn’t swallow a morsel at the feast afterwards.
You were taking revenge, Gopal accused Balaram later. So you deserved what happened next.
No, Balaram protested. It was just the truth. It was Vanity, precisely where it ought to be, outside the obelion.
But, at the time, even truth was no consolation.
The morning after the ceremony Toru-debi went down to their pond for her morning bath and found it covered with poisoned fish. At almost exactly the same time, Alu, who was eating in the kitchen, heard screams in the bamboo forest behind their house. He pushed away his brass thala and ran out of the house by the back door.
A path ran from the back door past the well, through dense stands of bamboo to three solitary huts nestled in a dip, a long way off. Those were the huts in which Maya Debnath lived with her father and her brother. She walked down that path every morning, on her way to Balaram’s house.
Alu raced down the path trying to make as little noise as he could. He heard the voices again. One of them was Maya’s, shrill with fear. Alu left the path and circled round, through the bamboo, towards the sound.
Then he saw them: Maya was standing in the middle of the path, surrounded by Bhudeb Roy’s five sons. The youngest, barely six, was clinging to his oldest brother’s shorts.
Maya was eleven then, a few months younger than Alu, but a good head taller and sturdily built. She had a red sari wound around her, covering her budding breasts. It was an old shrunken piece of cloth, and it fell well short of her ankles and left her shoulders bare. She had a six-foot length of bamboo in her hands. Her firm, rounded face and her gently slanting eyes were dark with anger. She had the pole steady in her hands, pointed at the eldest boy. But he could see that she was afraid: sweat glistened on her chin and her bare shoulders.
Bhudeb Roy’s eldest son, circling outside the range of the pole, said, threatening her with his bunched fists: Don’t make trouble. Listen to me. Don’t go to that house again. If you do, there’ll be trouble for you and your father.
Maya spat back: Why don’t you try to stop me? All you’ll have is a hole in your babu shorts where it hurts.
Alu stopped only for a moment. Then he ran, throwing himself through the bamboo thickets, towards the three huts where Maya lived.
Maya’s family were weavers. Her brother, Rakhal, was only sixteen, but already among the tallest in the village, and known everywhere for his skill with the bamboo pole. He had a special one for serious fights, studded with nails. He had made it himself, after a fight in which his cheek had been opened with a knife. He still bore the scar. Usually it was hardly visible, for Rakhal was by nature a gentle, dreamy boy. But when he was angry the scar would open up and glow an unearthly bloody crimson.
Alu found him sitting at his loom, tugging at the strings of the shuttle in mechanical boredom. Alu pulled him up and pointed to his fighting-pole beside the loom. He tried to speak but, panting, couldn’t find his breath. Rakhal looked at his wild eyes and he needed no telling. He leapt up, gathering his lungi around his waist, threw his fighting-pole over his shoulder and ran, with Alu close on his heels.
From a distance they saw Bhudeb Roy’s eldest son snatching at one end of Maya’s pole. They saw the other boys throw themselves on Maya and they saw her go down, struggling under their weight. Then Rakhal roared and his pole flailed in the air, whistling like a kite-string in a gale. The boys looked up and they saw him, bearing down on them with his pole in his hands and his livid scar shining like a pennant, and the next moment they were running and Maya was picking herself slowly off the dust.
Rakhal, balked, stood looking after them as they crashed through the thickets of bamboo, and spat into the dust. He glanced at Maya to make sure that she was unhurt and turned back towards their huts, leaving Alu alone with her.
Alu, suddenly overcome with embarrassment, dug his hands into his shorts and began walking quickly towards their house. Maya followed close behind. When she was a step behind him, she laughed: Why did you have to call him? Were you afraid? Alu’s steps quickened, but she was right behind him. Were you afraid? Why don’t you say, little babu? Alu, walking stiff-legged, almost running, could not bear it any more. He broke into a run and disappeared into the house.
When Maya reached the house, Toru-debi, only just returned from the pond and its carpet of dead fish, was standing in the courtyard listening to Nonder-ma. She saw Maya dishevelled and covered with dust and beckoned to her.
After she had heard the whole story, Toru-debi went to the well and bathed. She oiled and combed her hair and dressed herself in a new sari. And then, armed with all the powers of cleanliness, she marched into Balaram’s study.
Without a word to Balaram she began tipping his books out of the bookshelves. Balaram did not even try to stop her. He stalked silently out of the study and shut himself up in his bedroom.
Even with Maya and Nonder-ma’s help, it took Toru-debi a long time to carry the books out into the courtyard. But she did a thorough job. At the end of it the study was as empty as a dry eggshell. Not a leaf of paper nor a scrap of binding remained to remind Balaram of his library.
Then, after sprinkling kerosene over the huge mound of books in the courtyard, Toru-debi struck a match and set them alight. Alu, standing behind a door, watched the crackling flames dance around the mound. Then he spotted something and darted forward. Toru-debi saw him, and shouted: What have you got in your hands?
Alu backed away, his hands behind his back, as she bore down on him. She lunged, but he managed to sway out of her reach. Then he heard Maya’s voice, close to his ear: Give it to me. A sari rustled and he felt the warm, sweet firmness of her breasts against his shoulder.
When Toru-debi caught up with him his hands were empty. Maya had disappeared.
That night, when all that was left of Balaram’s books was a pile of ashes and a few charred bindings scattered around the courtyard, Alu crept into Balaram’s room. Balaram was sitting crumpled in his easy chair, his fingers in his hair. Alu climbed on to the arm of his easy chair and slipped a book out of his shorts into Balaram’s lap. Then he put his arms around his neck.
It was the Life of Pasteur.
This time the tears were Balaram’s.
Chapter Two
A Pasteurized Cosmos
Eventually, Assistant Superintendent of Police Jyoti Das heard about it all. Bhudeb Roy told him about Balaram’s doings at the Saraswati Puja in the course of a rambling and slightly nostalgic account of Balaram’s life in Lalpukur. Though ten years had passed, he remembered the incident graphically.
It was the first sign, Bhudeb Roy said, of Balaram’s deterioration. He said it a little regretfully, for even then, after all that had happened, he could never speak of Balaram without respect. But he remembered that he was talking to an AS of Police and why, so he added: But he was always like that – confused. A confused extremist. It took me many years to find out, and by that time it was too late. He was set in his dangerous ways. An extremist; no respect for order. A terribly confused extremist.
ASP Das was tired and a little bewildered after all that had happened that day. It was the first time, as he told his mother afterwards, that he had drawn his gun in earnest, meaning to kill. Of course, they had all been trained to deal with situations like that at the Police Academy. But it was different somehow when it actually happened. With un-officerly embarrassment he had noticed his wrists shaking lon
g before he had fired a shot, and despite himself he couldn’t help being glad that he had not actually had to use the gun. He had hardly expected that one flare would do the whole job for him. He noticed Bhudeb Roy’s huge face again with a start and sat up. But, Bhudeb-babu, he said, if you thought so then, why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you make him leave the village?
You don’t understand, Bhudeb Roy said. You don’t understand, Superintendent-shaheb (Assistant, Assistant, Jyoti Das protested). There was little I could do. By then he was part of the village. He’d been here sixteen years, and as a schoolmaster, too. He had a house here. What could I do? Who knows what the villagers would have done if I’d tried to push him out of Lalpukur? You know how they are – simple …
Jyoti Das looked at that vast, bloated face with its little squinting eyes and clamp-like jaws and he flinched inwardly. He had had no alternative but to accept Bhudeb Roy’s ‘co-operation’ and hospitality, but he could not bring himself to like the man.
Jyoti Das heard of the burning of Balaram’s books quite by chance from Gopal Dey a few months later, in a small south Calcutta police station. He liked Gopal the moment he was led into the interrogation room. Gopal was very indignant at first and full of bluster. He quoted laws and sections and sub-clauses for a good five minutes after he was brought in. But once Jyoti Das shook his hand and offered him a cup of tea Gopal sat down quietly on a straight-backed wooden chair across the desk from him. Soon he began to talk. In a few minutes Jyoti Das knew he had nothing important to say, but he listened anyway, for he liked his flustered avuncular manner. And in any case there was nothing else to do but to go back to his grimy office and listen to his boss the Deputy Inspector-General, who was something of a horticulturist, talk of carrots and cauliflowers.