The Calcutta Chromosome

by Amitav Gosh

  Then at last, when the daylight had nearly faded, Farley called out: 'Bearer, kindly light the gas lamps. I have a great deal more to do.'

  At this the assistant began to expostulate: 'But, sir, there is nothing here, you will see nothing, you are simply wasting your time, for no reason.'

  Farley had been hoping and waiting for precisely such a moment. Now, raising his voice, he said: 'Hear me well: I shall not leave this laboratory until I have seen the transformations that Laveran described. I am willing to stay here all night, if need be: I shall stay as long as I must.'

  With that he lowered his head to the microscope once again. But in the meanwhile he had taken the precaution of placing the glass tumbler before him again, and now out of the corner of his eyes he saw the assistant snatching up a set of clean slides and slipping away to the anteroom.

  Once he was gone, Farley made his way silently across the laboratory. Flattening himself against the wall, he crept towards the door until he had manoeuvred himself into a position where he could look into the anteroom without himself being detected.

  Farley had steeled himself for anything, or so he thought, but he was unprepared for what he saw next. First the assistant went up to the woman, Mangala, still regally ensconced on her divan, and touched his forehead to her feet. Then in the manner of a courtier or acolyte he whispered some word of advice in her ear. She nodded in agreement and took the clean slides from him. Reaching for the birdcages she allowed her hand to rest upon each of the birds in turn, as though she were trying to ascertain something. Then she seemed to come to a decision; she reached into a cage, and took one of the shivering birds into her lap. She folded her hands over it and her mouth began to move as though muttering a prayer. Then suddenly a scalpel appeared in her right hand; she held the bird away from her and with a single flick of her wrist beheaded the dying pigeon. Once the flow of blood had lessened, she picked up the clean slides, smeared them across the severed neck, and handed them to the assistant.

  Farley had the presence of mind to go hurrying across the room to his microscope. No sooner had he seated himself than the young man came in.

  'Please examine these now, sir,' he said with a wide smile. 'Maybe you will at last achieve success in your quest.'

  Farley turned the slides over his hand. 'But,' he said, 'these are not properly stained: the blood on them is still fresh.'

  'Yes, sir,' said the assistant, offhandedly. 'Perhaps that which you are looking for can only be seen in freshly drawn blood.'

  Farley placed the slide under the microscope and looked into the instrument. At first he saw nothing unusual; nothing that would have indicated to him, had he not known, that this exhibit came from a pigeon. He noticed the familiar granules of malarial pigment. But then suddenly he saw movement; under his eyes amoeboid forms began to squirm and move, undulating slowly across the glassy surface. Then all at once there was a flurry of movement and they began to disintegrate: it was then that he saw Laverari's rods appear, hundreds of them, tiny cylindrical things, with their pointed, penetrating heads piercing the bloody miasma.

  The sweat began to drip off Farley's forehead now, as he watched the horned creatures burrowing, writhing, wriggling in frantic search. His breath grew laboured; his head began to spin. He sat up, gasping, the sight of these wilful, struggling creatures still vivid in his eyes. His gaze strayed to the window, and discovered a row of faces lined up against the glass, watching him, as he squirmed in his seat, mopping his brow. His eyes locked with Mangala's; she was standing in front of all the others, staring at him, smiling to herself. Clutched in her hand, in full view, was the body of the decapitated bird, the blood still oozing from its macabre wound.

  'Tell him,' the woman said with a mocking smile, 'tell him that what he sees is the creature's member entering the body of its mate, doing what men and women must do… '

  And here, at this point of revelation, which shows that Farley had already arrived at the conclusion that was to make his erstwhile team-mate famous, the narrative ends. For now, unable to contain himself any longer, Farley flung the slides at the woman and stalked quickly out of the laboratory.

  But before franking the letter for the post, next morning, Farley added a few scribbled lines in the margin: 'In haste: much that I feared has been confirmed in these last hours. Shortly before matins, there was a knock on my door: it was Cunningham's young assistant. He told me – oh so many things – I shall write of them all to you in time. Suffice it to say for the present, that everything is other than what it appears to be, a phantom of itself. The young man has promised to reveal everything to me if I would but accompany him to his birthplace. Fortunately the place of which he spoke is not far from the location of my clinic. We are to leave tomorrow: I shall write again and in greater detail, dear friend, once I know more… '

  But Elijah Farley never reached Barich: he disappeared during the journey, never to be seen again. The police discovered that he had indeed boarded the train at Sealdah, as scheduled, but had disembarked before his destination at a remote, rarely used station called Renupur, in severe monsoon weather. A guard was said to have reported later that a young man had been seen carrying his luggage.

  Abruptly Ava began to beep: Rest indecipherable, unable to continue…

  Chapter 22

  MURUGAN could not get to sleep.

  Sweltering under the mosquito net, he lay awake, watching the ceiling fan beat the heavy monsoon air, its stubby blades flashing hypnotically in the thin crack of light that was shining through the stubbornly unfastenable balcony door. The bedclothes had bunched up around his waist in moist, sweat-soaked clusters. Taking off his vest, he rolled it into a ball and dropped it out of the mosquito net. He was naked now, except for his cotton boxer shorts.

  The generator was still pounding away at the wedding down the road. The music seemed even louder now. But somehow, despite all that noise, he could hear the mosquitoes clearly, droning patiently around the bed, testing for openings, gathering in excitement every time a hand or a foot brushed against the fabric. Soon he couldn't tell whether the buzz was inside the net or outside; whether the tingling in his limbs came from their interrupted probings or the chafing of the moist sheets.

  He flattened himself against the mattress and tried to lie still. Spreadeagling his arms and legs he waited – waited to discover whether they were really inside the net; whether his inflamed skin would allow him to discern the feel of their bites.

  It was strangely intimate to lie there like that, against damp cloth, spread out in that elementally open posture of invitation, of embrace, of longing. When he looked down at his body, lying flat on the bed, he could not tell whether he was waiting for them to show themselves to him, or whether he was showing himself to them: displaying himself in those minute detailed ways that only they were small enough to see, to understand, because only they had eyes that were designed to see not the whole but the parts, each in its uniqueness. Involuntarily he flexed his shoulders, arching his back, offering himself up, waiting to discover where they would touch him first, where he would first detect the tingling prick of their bites, on his chest or his belly, on the muscle of his forearm or the weathered codpiece of his elbow.

  The fan became a blur; the mosquito net melted into a milky fog. He was floating outside it now, looking in, at people he knew, knew very well, even if only through books and papers. And now he was in again, inside the net; he was one of them too, lying on a hard hospital charpoy, stripped, naked, watching the English doctor uncork a test tube full of mosquitoes into his net. In his fist he still clutched the coins he had been given at the hospital gates. He held on to them tightly, savouring their feel, their reassurance; they were so cool to the touch, so hard edged; they made everything so simple, so clean: a handful of coins, a rupee, for handing on the thing that lived in his blood, for safekeeping, to the doctor.

  He saw faces around his bed now, rippling, like reeds, beyond the surface of the mosquito net, faces that were watc
hing him, studying his body, as it lay there in its urgent nakedness; faces he knew, or recognized, a grey-haired woman smiling through twinkling bifocals; a gap-toothed boy, grinning, circling the bed; an old man with tears in his eyes, peering at him in the darkness; a thin, young woman, holding hands with her friend. They were standing around his bed in attitudes of concern, like nurses and doctors' assistants, waiting for him to sink into anaesthetized oblivion.

  And now the bearded Englishman reappears, dressed in his white coat, smoking a cigar, armed with half a dozen test tubes; he reaches in, with a little butterfly net, pulls it out and expertly traps an engorged mosquito in a test tube, covering the opening with a handkerchief-wrapped thumb. He holds up the test tube and shows it to the others and they clap; they are excited, full of encouragement.

  The Englishman draws mightily on his cigar and puffs into the test tube; the insect dies, the tiny buzzing creature that is carrying his blood inside it. The doctor holds it up and shows it to the others, they reach for it eagerly; they want to see it for themselves; this extrusion of his flesh, and in their eagerness the test tube slips from their fingers, falls to the floor, shatters, filling the room with a thin tinkle of breaking glass.

  Murugan sat suddenly upright, the sweat pouring off his face, not sure whether he was still dreaming or awake. The net was buzzing with mosquitoes; he could see them dancing like motes, in the finger of light that bisected his bed. His whole body was aflame, covered with bites. He had been scratching himself furiously in his sleep; he could see blood on his fingernails, and on the sheets.

  He climbed out of the bed and walked around the room, scratching hard. The air was heavy with the smell of his own sweat. He opened the door and stepped out on to the balcony.

  The street below was empty now, but the generator was still running in the building down the street. The archway at the entrance to the wedding seemed brighter than ever, flooding the street with light. Relays of workers were running back and forth through the entrance, loading their bamboo handcarts with stacks of folding chairs and tables.

  Suddenly, with a squeal of rubber, a taxi came shooting around the Rawdon Street corner and stopped at the gates of the old mansion at number three. A woman in a sari stepped out. She was too far away for Murugan to get a look at her face, but the light from the wedding arch was just strong enough to give him a glimpse of a streak of white, running through her hair. Taking a key out of her purse, she unlocked the gates and went in.

  Murugan waited a minute to see if she would come out again and then went back into the bedroom. He was getting into bed when he heard the click of a closing door somewhere near at hand. Getting out of bed, he stuck his head into the corridor. The flat was dark and still. He fetched a torch and made his way across the drawing room to Mrs Aratounian's bedroom. Lowering himself on one knee, beside the closed door, he put his ear to the crack. He heard a soft, rhythmic sound inside: like gentle snoring – or possibly a fan. It was hard to be sure.

  Murugan hesitated, wondering whether he ought to make sure that Mrs Aratounian was all right. He decided against and tiptoed quickly back to his bedroom. Just as he was about to step through the door he felt a sharp stabbing pain in his right foot.

  Swearing softly, he stooped to investigate. There was a small gash in his heel. He had cut it on a sharp object, something that was lying on the floor, glinting in the halflight.

  He picked it up and looked at it. It was an inch-long shard of thin glass, probably from some kind of tube.

  Chapter 23

  IT WAS PAST ONE when Sonali decided to go looking for Romen: she couldn't keep still and sleep was out of the question.

  Fortunately, at exactly the right moment, one of her neighbours came home from a party, in a taxi. Snatching up her handbag, Sonali ran down and jumped in, without really giving any thought to where she would go. On an impulse, recalling Romen's overheard conversation at the gates of the Wicket Club, she told the taxi driver to go to Robinson Street.

  She couldn't think of what Romen might be doing there at this time of the night. Yet somehow, when the taxi stopped at the gates of the old house she had an inexplicable feeling that Romen was inside. Fortunately he'd left behind a set of keys at her flat a few days ago: she'd put it in her handbag and forgotten to give it back.

  She managed to find the key to the gate, but once she was in she wasn't sure of what to do next. She made her way down the gravel path, to the portico, and looked in through the door. It was very dark inside; she couldn't see very far. Cupping her hands, she shouted: 'Romen, are you there?'

  She wasn't surprised when there was no answer: a generator was making a terrific noise next door. She could hardly hear her voice herself.

  She always carried a small torch in her handbag, for power cuts. She took it out and shone the light into the vast hallway ahead. The beam circled slowly through the darkness, picking out randomly scattered piles of mattresses, charpoys and battered cooking utensils.

  Romen had brought Sonali to the house once, a few months before,' to show off his new acquisition. The hallway was full of people then, cooking, eating, sleeping, feeding their children. The entire construction gang was living in the gutted shell of the house. They were from Nepal and there were about thirty of them altogether, not including the old women who had been brought along to look after the children. They cooked their meals in a paved courtyard at the back and slept in the hallways and under the portico, spreading out their mattresses and charpoys wherever they could. They were all related, Romen had told her, sons, grandsons, daughters-in-law, sons' wives, mothers, aunts: a whole village on the move.

  She looked around once again, peering into the uneasy shadows that skimmed over the murky gloom of the hallway. Their belongings were all there, just as she remembered, but none of them seemed to be anywhere in sight.

  Crossing the threshold, she took a few tentative steps into the hall. Then she caught a whiff of an odd smell and came to a sudden halt. It smelled like smoke at first, and she had a moment of panic, wondering whether there was a fire somewhere within. She sniffed the air again, and was startled to catch the distinctive odour of incense, the sweet, acrid smell of burning camphor. It was sweeping into the hall in clouds, from somewhere at the back.

  She took a few more steps into the darkness, and now her ears, growing accustomed to the mechanical roar next door, picked up another sound: a hollow, rhythmic noise just distinguishable from the throbbing of the generator – a sound of drumming, familiar from pujas and festival days, when drums pounded in worship all over the city.

  The sound grew louder as Sonali approached the grand ceremonial staircase that lay at the back of the hall. Suddenly the curved banisters were in front of her, their ragged, splintered rails wreathed in smoke. Shining the torch upwards she saw that smoke was pouring into the stairwell from above. It hung thick around her, diffusing the beam of the torch into a milk-white glow.

  The staircase was a rusted shell; the last time she saw it the workers had just begun the job of stripping it down to the steel scaffolding, as a preliminary to restoring it to its original glory, when it had swept upwards in a grand curve of mahogany and wrought iron. 'The structure is still sound,' Romen had told her. She had followed him gingerly, stepping from foothold to foothold, and had counted herself lucky when she made it to the top without a fall. Looking at it now, curling up into the smoke, like a gigantic vine, she shied away, wiping her watering eyes. Then, making up her mind, she took a grip on the banisters and pulled herself up a couple of steps.

  She stood on a steel rail and shone the torch ahead until it fell upon a length of rusty metal, lying exposed under a plank of rotten wood, a couple of steps further up. That was what Romen had said to do, she remembered now: don't step on the wood – keep to the steel frame. She leaned forward and jumped. Her foot slipped but she managed to catch hold of the banisters. Trying not to look down, she shut her eyes and breathed deeply, struggling to steady herself. She climbed crablike to the next
foothold, biting the torch between her teeth, using her hands as well as her feet. She went up the next few steps the same way, rounding the curve of the staircase. After a few more steps she stopped to catch her breath and pointed the torch ahead. The landing at the top of the staircase was no more than a few yards away now. The drumming seemed very close; she could feel it reverberating in the metal, under her hands and feet. When her hand reached the landing she took the torch out of her mouth and placed it on a ledge. She heaved herself up and collapsed on the floorboards.

  The drumming was all around her now, so loud and close that she could not tell which direction it was coming from. As she was turning to look, her sari brushed against the torch and knocked it over. It rolled a couple of inches, eluding her hand, and fell off the edge of the landing. She watched as it went spinning down the stairwell, its beam circling around the hall until it hit the floor and went out.

  Stifling a sob, she sat up. She began to pat the floorboards around her, trying to orient herself, swivelling all the way around, banging her hands on the splintering wood. Then it dawned on her that she no longer knew which way she was facing – towards the staircase or away from it: her disorientation was complete.

  She could feel her chest constricting. She knew she would panic if she stayed on the floor any longer, flailing about, blinded by sweat and smoke, deafened by the noise. She climbed to her feet and saw a dull orange glow somewhere ahead of her, within the whirling clouds of smoke. She took a step towards it and then lowered herself to her hands and knees. She couldn't trust herself to walk on the rotten floor and began to crawl instead, inching slowly towards the glow, shutting her eyes against the stinging smoke.