The Calcutta Chromosome

by Amitav Gosh

  When she had advanced a couple of yards, she saw that the light was shining out of an arched doorway. Now suddenly she knew where she was: she was facing the entrance to the largest room in the house, a huge woodpanelled mirrored chamber that had once served as a reception room. Ramen had insisted on bringing her up to see it – it was the pride of the house, he said, and he was going to restore it to its former state.

  She pushed herself closer to the archway and figures began to take shape in the smoky glow ahead of her. They were sitting crosslegged on the floor, with their backs to her, facing in the other direction. She saw a couple of heads first, and then more, and more, until the whole room seemed to be filled with people. They were chanting something and some were keeping time with drums while others were beating little hand-held cymbals.

  She could not bring herself to go forward and there was no going back; she would never be able to find her way down without the torch. Then she remembered something that Romen had showed her on their visit: the reception room had a small raised gallery at the back, a minstrel gallery Romen had called it. He had led her up to it, to show her how immense the room looked from up there. She tried to calm herself now, to think back to that day, several months ago. They had reached the gallery by climbing up a narrow, steep staircase, almost like a ladder. Sonali made an effort to calm herself so she could recall where those stairs were.

  She crept forward another yard or so and spotted the entrance to a little anteroom to her right. Edging towards it, she drew level with the entrance and glanced in. At the far corner, she spotted the opening that led to the gallery, glowing orange against the velvety darkness of the room. There were no people in the anteroom, so far as she could tell.

  She slipped around the corner and rose to her feet. Then she edged along the wall, with one arm stretched out until her hand hit upon the cold metal of the stepladder. She stepped back and looked at the opening to the gallery: it was directly above her now. All she could see was the flickering orange glow of a fire, reflected through clouds of smoke.

  She took a grip on the ladder and climbed quickly up. At the top, the smoke suddenly welled up in her face, forcing itself into her lungs. She stuffed the end of her sari into (her mouth, in an effort to choke back a cough, and looked in.

  The narrow, flimsy looking gallery was empty. Pulling her feet up, she sank down and flattened herself on the floor of the gallery. She noticed now that the smoke was even thicker here than it was below; trapped by the ceiling, it swirled around the gallery in dense clouds. Lowering her face, she held her sari pressed against her watering eyes. They were smarting so much now that she knew she would not be able to keep them open for more than a few seconds at a time.

  When the stinging had dulled a little, she thrust her head to the edge and looked down. She caught a glimpse of the tops of dozens of heads, some male, some female, young and old, packed in close together. Their faces were obscured by the smoke and flickering firelight but she spotted a couple of weatherbeaten Nepali faces that she was sure she had seen before, when Ramen last brought her to the house. For the rest it seemed like a strangely motley assortment of people: men in patched lungis, a handful of brightly painted women in cheap nylon saris, a few young students, several prim-looking middle-class women – people you would never expect to see together.

  Narrowing her eyes against the smoke, Sonali followed their gaze to the fire, burning at the far end of the room: a heap of coal-dust was glowing red in a brazier, improvised from a battered cement pan. Then she had a shock: somewhere among the faces around the fire she spotted a face she knew. She looked again: it was a skeletally thin boy in a T-shirt. Sonali reeled: it was the boy who had been living in her servant's room for the last few months, there could be no doubt about it. He was smiling, saying something to the person next to him.

  There was a small clearing in front and every now and again the boy and the others around him would reach in and touch something. Sonali could not see what it was: her view was blocked by several closely packed heads. The crowd was bunched thickly around whatever it was that was lying there; everybody in the room seemed to be staring at that space.

  Sonali shut her smarting eyes and let her head drop to the floor. Her sari was drenched and she could barely move her limbs. The floor seemed to turn under her: she knew she was very close to losing consciousness.

  Then there was a stir in the crowd and Sonali forced herself to look down again. A figure had come out of the shadows: it was a woman and she was dressed very plainly – in a crisply starched sari, with a white scarf tied around her hair. Her figure was short and matronly and Sonali took her to be in late middle age. She looked very familiar; Sonali was certain she was someone she had once known but hadn't seen in years.

  She had a cloth bag slung over one shoulder, an ordinary cotton jhola, of the kind that every student takes to college. In her left hand she was carrying a bamboo birdcage. She seated herself by the fire and placed the bag and the birdcage beside her. Then, reaching into the bag, her movements brisk and businesslike, she took out two scalpels and a pair of glass plates.

  She arranged the plates and the scalpel in front of her, on a piece of white cloth, and reached into her bag again. She took out a small clay figure and touched it to her forehead, before setting it down beside her. Then she reached out, placed her hands on whatever it was that was lying before the fire and smiled – a look of extraordinary sweetness came over her face.

  Raising her voice, the woman said to the crowd, in archaic rustic Bengali: 'The time is here, pray that all goes well for our Laakhan, once again.'

  Suddenly Sonali was struck by a terrible sense of foreboding. Raising her head as high as she dared she looked again into the space by the fire. She caught a glimpse of a body, lying on the floor.

  The drumming rose to a crescendo: there was a flash of bright metal and a necklace of blood flew up and fell sizzling on the fire.

  Sonali's head crashed to the floor and everything went dark.

  THE DAY AFTER

  Chapter 24

  IT WAS seven fifteen in the morning and Urmila was nearing the end of her tether. She was in the kitchen, grinding spices, perspiration dripping off her face on to her grease-spotted sari. She had already been up an hour: she had given her parents their breakfast; she had cleaned the kitchen; she had fed and bathed her nephew and niece; she had washed her younger brother's uniform for his afternoon football match. She would have to leave within the hour if she was to be on time for the press conference at the Great Eastern Hotel. But there was still the business of the fish to deal with, and there was no sign of a fish-seller yet.

  Urmila looked out of the kitchen window, trying to estimate how long it would take her to run to Gariahat Bazaar and back. She was in trouble, she knew, unless something miraculous happened soon: it would take at least half an hour if she had to go down to the bazaar, what with picking out a fish and bargaining and all the rest – there was no way around that.

  The flat was on the third floor, boxed in on every side by other multi-storey buildings. The kitchen window was the only part of the flat that had a view, other than the balcony. It commanded a glimpse of a sliver of the city: she could see the ragged, spreading skyline of south Calcutta stretching away longitudinally, from the park below – a vista of mildew-darkened roofs vanishing into the smudged glow of a lowering monsoon sky.

  Down below, in the park, the usual half-dozen cricket matches were already in progress. She could hear the thud of wood on leather and a few drowsy voices, shouting encouragement. In another corner of the park half a dozen men were busy swinging clubs and doing push-ups, below the tin roof of a body-building school. Further away, RashBehari Avenue was stirring in anticipation of rush hour. But the roadsides were still relatively empty except for a few shoppers hurrying back from Gariahat Bazaar, along the short-cut, with clumps of vegetables hanging over the tops of their nylon shopping bags.

  The short-cut to Gariahat Bazaar curved off from t
he main avenue a few hundred yards away. It was a long, narrow lane whose principal landmark was a rambling, oldfashioned house, with a gravel driveway, a pillared portico and a well-tended garden. The house was clearly visible from the kitchen: Urmila's eyes often fell on it when she was working there. It was Romen Haldar's residence.

  Just then the doorbell rang.

  'The bell's ringing, Urmi,' her mother called out from her bedroom. 'Can't you hear it?'

  Her father was out on the balcony with his paper, going through the Announcements column, a favourite morning pastime. He was reading the entries out aloud to himself, spitting out the names like chewed fish-bones. He put the paper on his knees and looked up. 'Who is it?' he called out. 'Someone go and have a look.'

  Almost immediately her sister-in-law's voice came floating out of her bedroom: she was feeding her baby and couldn't get out of bed. Her older brother had already left to catch a morning train. Her younger brother was in the bathroom, snapping his fingers and singing, 'Disco diwana'.

  Then her mother called out, in her softest, most cajoling voice: 'Go and have a look, Urmi, no one will if you don't… '

  I'm busy here! she wanted to scream. Can't you see; I'm busy here, trying to get things ready before going to work…?

  The doorbell rang again and now her six-year-old nephew ran into the kitchen and began to tug at her sari. 'Open the door, Urmi-pishi,' sang the boy. 'Urmi-pishikirrni-pishi, open the door, open the door… '

  She slammed the heavy pestle on the pitted surface of the mortar, brilliantly coloured now with turmeric and chili, and pushed past her nephew, who was lying flat on the floor. The boy stretched out his hands as she went by and fastened his fingers on the bottom of her sari. She dragged him along for a couple of paces and then slapped his clenched fist.

  He erupted into a wail and went racing to his parents' bedroom, crying: 'She hit me, she hit me, kirmi-pishi hit me…'

  As she undid the doorlatch, Urmila heard her sister-in-law's voice break into a scream: 'How dare you hit my son?'

  She flung the door open and found a young man standing outside, beside a large covered basket. She had never seen him before; he looked very young to be a vendor. He was dressed in a lungi and a greying T-shirt.

  'You slut,' the voice followed Urmila through the open doorway. 'You think I don't know what you're up to, coming home late every night? I'll teach you a lesson; I'll teach you to hit my children… '

  Urmila stepped out and slammed the door behind her. Embarrassment lent a note of shrillness to her voice as she snapped: 'What's the matter? What do you want?'

  The young man gave her a cheerful grin, exposing a wide gap in his front teeth. Urmila was suddenly ashamed, mortified at the thought that she had allowed her sister-in-law to provoke her in front of a complete stranger. Inadvertently, she drew the back of her hand across her forehead. Her face contorted into a grimace as the ground spices burnt a smarting furrow across her face and brow. She wiped her eyes hurriedly with the end of her sari.

  'What do you want?' she said again, more evenly.

  The young man was squatting beside the basket now. With another smile he pulled back a layer of paper and plastic to reveal a pile of fish, gleaming silver in the earlymorning light.

  He grinned. 'I just came to ask whether you need any fish this morning, didi,' he said. 'That's all.'

  Chapter 25

  'I'VE NEVER SEEN YOU here before,' Urmila said, kneeling beside the basket of fish. She began to examine the fish, pulling back their gills – out of habit, for today she really didn't care what she bought or for how much.

  The young fish-seller gave her a cheerful smile, bobbing his head. 'I'll be coming regularly now,' he said. 'Buy one and see: I have the best fish in the market, fresh out of the water.'

  'Every fish-seller says that,' said Urmila. 'It doesn't mean a thing.'

  The fish-seller bristled. 'If you don't believe me, go and ask around,' he said. 'I sell to all the best houses. Why, do you know Romen Haldar's house, in the next lane?'

  Urmila looked up, raising an eyebrow.

  'Let me tell you,' he said proudly. 'They buy all their fish from me. Only from me: you can go and ask if you like.'

  Reaching into the basket he moved a couple of fish out of the way. 'Here, let me show you something,' he said. 'Do you see this one here, this big ilish? I'm keeping that for them. I'm on my way there right now. I told them I'd bring them something special this morning.'

  'I'll take it,' said Urmila.

  The fish-seller shook his head. 'No,' he said, grinning. 'I can't give you that one: that's for them. But I'll give you this other one, it's just as good – here, look.'

  Urmila gave him a perfunctory nod. 'All right,' she said, 'that one.' She told him to cut it up and went in to fetch her purse. By the time she came back, the fish-seller had a packet ready for her: he had wrapped the fish in bits of paper and stuffed it into a plastic bag.

  Urmila clicked her tongue in annoyance when she saw the packet. 'You shouldn't have wrapped it up,' she said.

  The fish-seller mumbled an excuse and began counting his money. Urmila went inside. She had no time to lose now. Hurrying into the kitchen she tipped the contents of the packet onto a plastic plate, in the sink. The chunks of fish fell out with a thump, scattering all over the sink. Urmila grimaced: the paper in which the fish was wrapped had turned into a soggy mess. She touched a piece of fish gingerly and the tip of her finger came away with a bit of paper attached. She had trouble shaking it off; it had dissolved into a wad of sticky glue.

  Wrinkling her nose in disgust, she stole a quick glance out of the window. RashBehari Avenue was jammed with buses and minibuses, all belching thick clouds of smoke. She had no more than half an hour to spare if she was to get to the Great Eastern Hotel in time for the press conference. She began to scrub furiously.

  After a few minutes she realized that her scrubbing was only making matters worse by working the paper deeper into the chunks of fish. She threw up her hands, thoroughly irritated now, and peeled a scrap of paper off her fingers. It was thin, cheap Xerox paper: the kind that accumulated in vast quantities in the Calcutta copying room.

  So this is where it all ends up, she thought, as fishwrapping.

  She glanced at the plastic bag again and saw that it was still full of paper. A few bits and pieces were dry; the blood hadn't seeped through to them yet. She tipped the paper out on the counter and held a sheet flat with the back of her hand.

  It was a large, legal-size photocopy of a page of very fine English newsprint. The typeface was unfamiliar, old fashioned: she knew at a glance that the page wasn't from any of the current English-language papers printed in Calcutta. She made space for it on a shelf and spread it out.

  The print was so fine she had trouble reading it. She turned on a light and looked at it again, turning instinctively to the top margin to look for the paper's name. The masthead said The Colonial Services Gazette, in beautiful Gothic characters. Beside the name was a dateline: ' Calcutta, the twelfth of January, 1898.'

  The page was divided into eight columns, each containing dozens of announcements of a routine kind: 'D. Attwater, Esq. transferred to Almora as Deputy Magistrate, Revenues', 'So-and-so to quit his post in the Port Authority, Calcutta, in order to become Assistant Harbourmaster in Singapore' and so on. Urmila skimmed quickly through it. She could not see why anyone would go to the trouble of copying something like that, a record of old bureaucratic appointments. She was about to sweep it into the wastebin when she noticed that one of the announcements had been underlined, in ink.

  Squinting at the page she read: 'Leave approved for Surgeon-Colonel D. D. Cunningham, Presidency General Hospital, Calcutta, 10-15 January… '

  Urmila cast a quick glance at the clock above the dining table. She really had no time to lose now, not a minute; if she didn't get the fish done in the next ten minutes she would be late for the press conference.

  She knew she ought to get on with the cooking.
But instead she found herself pulling out the two other bits of paper left in the plastic bag.

  The next page was even more puzzling than the first. It was a copy of a sheet of paper with a list of names under an elaborate and unfamiliar logo. Holding the logo up to the light, she saw that it said 'South-Western Railways'. Handwritten beneath it were the words: '10 January 1898, Passenger list, Compartment 8'. Under this was a list of names. Urmila looked quickly through them; they seemed like British names. She read a couple of them to herself, spelling them out slowly: Major Evelyn Urquhart, D. Craven, Esq., Sir Andrew Acton… ' Then she noticed that a name at the bottom of the list had been underlined. It was: 'C. C. Dunn, Esq.'.

  That's strange, she thought. The other name was D. D. something.

  She didn't bother to look. She pushed the page aside and spread out the only remaining sheet.

  It was a copy of another page of The Colonial Services Gazette. This one was dated 30 January 1898. She cast a quick glance over it: another long list of transfers, leaves approved, positions filled. Again one of the announcements was underlined. It read: 'The public is notified that Surgeon-Colonel D. D. Cunningham is currently on leave pending his retirement. He will be replaced by SurgeonMajor Ronald Ross of the Indian Medical Service.'

  'Haven't you started cooking yet, Urmi?' her mother called out from the bedroom. 'It's getting late.'

  Urmila started. She was furious with herself now for wasting so much time staring at used Xerox paper. She snatched the sheets off the shelf, flung them aside and hurried over to the sink.

  The paper-wrapped fish had turned into a stinking, glutinous mess. It was all she could do not to vomit into the sink.

  Chapter 26