by Amitav Ghosh
The courtyard was even more crowded than the lane; you could see nothing but people. But, at the same time, it was absolutely silent, and the only sound you could hear was Alu’s voice, clear as water. He was sitting behind the loom on the platform, weaving very fast, but without so much as looking at the loom, and talking all the while.
And in a way that was the strangest thing of all; that he was talking. For Alu was a very silent man. I’ve seen him in the house every day for six months now, so in a way I know him well, for you can know a lot about a man by watching him daily. Whenever he was in the house he was quiet; most of the time he was in pain, too, for he always had boils bursting out all over him. And the rest of the time, when he wasn’t at work, he was at Hajj Fahmy’s – weaving, they say. In all those months I wonder if I’ve exchanged more than ten words with him. It wasn’t just me. As far as I could tell, all the others were friendly with him, but none of them was his particular friend. There were rumours about him and Karthamma, but no one could tell what to make of those. She’s a tall woman, very dark, with the temper of an animal, but also an animal’s courage, for she was the one person in the house who was never afraid to defy Zindi. Anyone else who did that, Zindi would have thrown out long ago, but not Karthamma. For Karthamma has a baby – the child Zindi was holding in her arms that night – and poor, childless Zindi treasured her for that alone; because she was a mother and because she had given her a son. If pure will could change flesh and blood, that baby would be more hers now than his mother’s.
Maybe the rumours about Karthamma and Alu were true, maybe not. But Zindi believed them anyway; perhaps because she wanted to, because she hoped that Alu would take Karthamma’s mind off the baby. But I, who have seen the world a bit, used to wonder: what could silent Alu and Karthamma have in common? Sometimes you saw them in the courtyard, she rubbing oil on the boils on his back. She was fond of him, maybe she even loved him, but to me it seemed the love of a sister, not of a lover. Did he talk to her? Perhaps; for, after all, she had stolen the money anticipating something. But if she recognized the Mr Alu she saw that night she must have been the only one in the Ras. To everyone else he was a quiet morose man, tormented by boils. A mild man, you would have said, who didn’t care much about anything.
But last night nobody else seemed to remember the man as he was. I was the only one who saw him and recognized a mystery. I saw a man I knew, but I heard a voice I had not heard before. I hate mystery: unless mystery is the tool of business it is its enemy. But, hate it or not, there he was in front of me, as great a mystery as any I’ve seen, and I could find no explanation.
He was talking softly, but there was a force in his voice which carried it over the clicking of the shuttle, so that nobody missed a word; an extraordinary force, perhaps you could call it passion. It was like a question, though he was not asking anything, bearing down on you from every side. And in that whole huge crowd nobody stirred or spoke. You could see that silently they were answering him, matching him with something of their own.
That was another mystery, for the people who were there are rarely quiet – at work, at night, in the cinema. But last night, peering into the courtyard under Zindi’s arm – which as fastidious men you may well appreciate wasn’t easy, or greatly facile, if one may put it as such, for as you may know, when Virat Singh, the famous wrestler, the great marble-biceped pehlwan of Bareilly, was living here, he once attempted to press his suit a little forcefully with her, but since he was not greatly to her taste she overpowered him, merely by baring an armpit and blowing gently upon it – but anyway, as I was saying, last night, peering under Zindi’s arm in not altogether salubrious conditions, I saw that very crowd absolutely silent, listening to a man, hardly more than a boy, talk, and that, too, not in one language but in three, four, God knows how many, a khichri of words; couscous, rice, dal and onions, all stirred together, stamped and boiled, Arabic with Hindi, Hindi swallowing Bengali, English doing a dance; tongues unravelled and woven together – nonsense, you say, tongues unravelled are nothing but nonsense – but there again you have a mystery, for everyone understood him, perfectly, like their mother’s lullabies. They understood him, for his voice was only the question; the answers were their own.
And what of me, looking out of Zindi’s dear, half-forgotten arms, in those few moments while her eyes were busy and Abu Fahl elsewhere? I will tell you: I saw mysteries, all around me, one growing out of another, and I could find no grasp on them, not the slightest hold. I was afraid. I was so afraid, I breathed and sniffed until my nose ran, grateful for Zindi’s generosity.
He talked about Louis Pasteur. They listened without a sound as he told them in detail about Louis Pasteur’s life, his experiments and his discoveries, how he went out into the villages of his country, leaving behind the security of his laboratory, and found cures for incurable diseases, restored the vanishing livelihood of thousands of weavers by saving the silkworm, made milk pure for the world, destroyed the venom in dogs’ teeth, and so many other things.
But yet, he said, Pasteur had died a defeated man.
Why? he asked, and you could feel – if such a thing is possible – the silence beginning to stir.
He, and others before him, he said, had thought over the matter for a long, long time, and at last, in the Star, it had fallen to him to discover the answer. There, in the ruins, he had discovered what it was that Pasteur had really wanted all his life – an intangible thing, something he had not understood himself, yet a thing the whole world had conspired to deny him.
Purity. Purity was what he had wanted, purity and cleanliness – not just in his home, or in a laboratory or a university, but in the whole world of living men. It was that which spurred him on his greatest hunt, the chase in which he drove the enemy of purity, the quintessence of dirt, the demon which keeps the world from cleanliness, out of its lairs of darkness and gave it a name – the Infinitely Small, the Germ.
And when Alu came to that all his old mildness vanished. He let the loom be and sat with his hands folded on his lap, absolutely still, but his voice grew in strength and power until it reached beyond the courtyard and into the lanes and gullies outside.
He told them about germs: how they are everywhere and nowhere; how they flow freely from hand to hand, how they sweep through a thousand people in a day, in a minute, faster than a man can count, throwing their coils around people wherever they may hide.
Pasteur had discovered the enemy, the Germ, but he had never been able to find him. All his life he had tried to launch war but, like a shadow, the enemy had eluded him, and in the end Pasteur had died defeated and bewildered.
Why? Because for all his genius Pasteur had never asked himself the real question: where is the germ’s battleground? What is it that travels from man to man carrying contagion and filth, sucking people out and destroying them even in the safety of their own houses, even when every door and window is shut? Which is the battleground which travels on every man and every woman, silently preparing them for their defeat, turning one against the other, helping them destroy themselves?
That was the real question, and Pasteur had never known it.
Then he leapt to his feet and with a sigh the whole crowd rose with him. He shouted in Arabic: Wa ana warisu, and I am his heir, for in the ruins of the Star I found the answer.
Money. The answer is money.
The crowd gasped, and while they were still reeling he shouted again: We will wage war on money. Are you with me?
And the whole crowd shouted back: Yes. Yes. Yes.
No money, no dirt will ever again flow freely in the Ras. Are you with me?
And again the crowd roared: Yes.
We will drive money from the Ras, and without it we shall be happier, richer, more prosperous than ever before.
But this time only a few people shouted with him. There were other voices which said: How?
I think it can safely be said that there was a note of uncertainty in Alu’s voice then, as th
ough he had only just understood what he was saying. Alu hesitated; I think he knew what he wanted to do, but not how to do it. The crowd sensed him falter. Another moment and the first bursts of laughter would have pealed out, sanity would have returned and that would have been the last anyone ever heard of Mr Alu.
But at that moment he was rescued. By whom?
By Professor Samuel, ex-accountant and clerk. He’s not really a professor of course. He was a teacher in some small-town college and, as you know, at home every teacher, whether he teaches pundits or pehlwans, is called a professor. This Samuel is an odd man, with peculiar ideas, but in his own way he is also a very clever man, a fine accountant. He had no sooner heard what Alu had to say than he delivered himself of a plan, full-grown and breathing.
First, he said, he would open files, with a page for every earning person in the Ras. Everyone would take their pay to him as soon as they received it, and the sum would be entered in the files against that man or woman’s name. The money would go into a common pool. Once a week the Professor and whoever wished to go with him would go into the Souq and buy everything that was needed in the Ras with that money. Then people could come and take whatever they needed, and the cost would be taken out of their accounts. In that way, he said, they would be able to do away with shops, and no longer would the shopkeepers drain away their savings, their sweat, and their labour in profits.
When he said that, the whole crowd rose and shouted and cheered, but the Professor stopped them. The shopkeepers of the Ras, he said, could be given a wage if they were willing to work with the others and help in buying and dividing food. They could be freed from their greed and they would be assured a livelihood. Otherwise, he said, there would be no place for them in the Ras.
Every person, he said, was to leave their address, their country, their town or village, wherever it was that they wished to send their money, and it would be entered into their pages on the files. At the end of every week, punctually, their savings would be sent back. And when the time came everybody there would see for themselves that the money they saved thus greatly exceeded anything they’d saved before.
There were many other things. I forget. Everyone was to be left a little money, whatever they needed to spend outside the Ras. But once they were in the Ras the money would have to be put away in an envelope and not touched again, until it was far outside the embankment. There would be no need for it in the Ras: they would get doctors, food, everything that was necessary, even films. No one would lack for something he needed, if he had no money today. The money would be found for him and taken out of his account later when he earned it.
Then Alu spoke again. He said that the Professor had read what was in his mind and put it in words. He asked the crowd: Are you willing to ask the Professor to work for us? To pay him a wage for his work? And in unison the crowd shouted: Yes.
That was how I lost my assistant.
Alu quietened them again. There was one other thing, he said. Every person in the Ras who wished to fight this war would also have to tie a piece of cloth above his right elbow. And whenever they left or entered a dwelling in the Ras they were to use that bit of cloth to dust the threshold, so that they left no dirt behind nor carried any with them. In this way, he said, they could know who was with them, and who against, and they could carry their fight to every doorstep.
After that there was so much noise, so much cheering, so much laughter that even Zindi flinched. Then I saw Abu Fahl rise and go up to Alu with his hands in his pockets. He pulled his hands out and emptied his pockets on to the platform. Alu tried to stop him, but the money was already there, beside him, and Abu Fahl wouldn’t touch it again. Professor Samuel was irritated, as well he might be, by this kind of impulsive foolishness. But he shouted for pencil and paper and counted the money and wrote it all down. There were others after that. First, the people from Zindi’s house: Zaghloul, a saner boy, you would have thought, had never lived; Chunni, the woman who swallows most of Professor Samuel’s earnings in exchange for I will not speculate what; thin Rakesh, and after him the whole crowd, hundreds of people, until the money on the platform had grown into a mound, and Samuel had run out of paper. By then it was all chaos, and I was grateful for the sheltered certainty of Zindi’s arm: women singing, people dancing and shouting. And in the middle of all that Hajj Fahmy’s family were busy sending out tray after tray of tea (they kept an account of course, for Professor Samuel’s files).
Then Zindi screamed, and for a moment I thought my head had rolled off my shoulders, for her arm snapped tight around my neck, which as you can see is no tree-trunk.
Far away from us, near the platform, Karthamma had risen to her feet, and in her hands was an old blue biscuit-tin.
Zindi threw herself into the crowd, shielding the baby with one arm and flailing about with the other. And while she fought she shouted, Give me back my money, you thief, you whore, and other things of that nature.
But Karthamma didn’t hesitate for a moment. She laughed, showing her brilliant white teeth, and said in her broken Hindi: It’s not your money, it has nothing to do with you. It’s the price of our sweat, our work. And, saying that, she took the lid off the tin and emptied the money on to the mound on the platform.
Zindi howled and her free arm thrashed about like a buzz-saw, but she was powerless – the crowd had imprisoned her.
Karthamma sneered at her as she struggled helplessly in the grip of a dozen men, and said: Give me back my child.
At that Zindi stopped fighting, and clutched the boy to her chest. There was laughter all around her then, though some people were quite angry. You could hear shouts: Send her out, send her out, what’s she doing here?
The fight had gone out of Zindi. Silently, hugging the boy, she let herself be pushed and elbowed out of the door. When she was beside me I saw that she was weeping. She muttered, tears streaming from her eyes: What are we going to do? He’s going to get us killed. We’re ruined, all our years of struggle wasted because of a few days of madness.
I took her arm then, and led her out, through the jeers of the crowd in the lane. And all the way back to her house she said not a single word.
Jeevanbhai stopped abruptly. His eyes rose to the ceiling and he seemed to go into a trance, swaying on his chair. Das, who had been straining forward, drinking in every word, felt himself fall, like a dropped puppet. He looked around him, startled. Jai Lal’s eyes were shut, as though he had been lulled into a doze by Jeevanbhai’s monotone. Das leant over and shook him. Without missing a breath Lal said loudly: Very interesting, Jeevanbhai, very interesting. And where is this man staying now?
Jeevanbhai fumbled around the desk for the bottle of whisky and poured himself another drink. He was clearly very tired. Propping up his head with his arm, he looked at them in turn.
He’s staying in Hajj Fahmy’s house now, he said wearily. I believe he’s weaving a lot. I’m sure Hajj Fahmy won’t lose by his hospitality. This man’s a good weaver, they say, and there’s a good market in hand-woven cloth among foreigners.
What will happen next, Patel sahb?
Who can tell? Jeevanbhai sighed. I know as little as you do.
I can’t understand it, Das broke in. I can’t understand it at all.
Lal snorted derisively: What don’t you understand? He’s worked out some kind of new money-making racket. That’s all you need to understand. It’s something to do with money.
He looked at Jeevanbhai for confirmation. Jeevanbhai inclined his head politely.
But what should we do now, Jai? said Das. What are our options? What can we do?
Nothing, Lal said drily. There’s nothing we can do. It’s a very tricky situation. We can’t alert the Ghaziri authorities. It would be a disaster if they found out that Indians are involved in this business. They’d probably stop giving new visas to Indian workers. They’ve done that kind of thing before. They might even expel the workers who’re already here. That would mean a drop in remittances, and therefore
in the foreign-exchange reserves back home and so on and so forth. If anything like that happened, half the embassy here would be recalled in disgrace, with all their increments docked. We can’t risk anything like that. We’ll just have to try to keep the whole thing quiet, and see what we can do. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll find some way of getting your man out of here and back to India.
Lal looked despondently at Jeevanbhai: Isn’t that true, Patel sahb?
Yes, said Jeevanbhai. His eyes searched the floor till they found the heavy leather attaché case Lal had brought with him. He looked at Lal expectantly.
Lal lifted the attaché case on to his knees and opened it. But, he said, you’ll keep us informed, Patel sahb, no?
Yes, of course, of course.
Lal took two bottles of Scotch whisky out of his case. Jeevanbhai stretched out his hand, but at that moment Das reached across and tapped Lal’s arm.
Listen, Jai, he said, I want to go to this place – the Ras – and look it over a bit. If possible, I’d like to see this man; see where he’s living and so on. It would give me a more realistic picture, and at least I’d have something for the reports I’ll have to send back home. What do you think?
Lal leant back, with the bottles in his hands, and looked inquiringly at Jeevanbhai: I’m sure you can arrange it, no, Patel sahb?
Jeevanbhai clicked his tongue in irritation: No. I don’t see how it can be done. How can anyone take an absolute stranger into that place? People would be suspicious at once. I couldn’t guarantee his safety, especially if people found out what his connections are.