The Calcutta Chromosome

by Amitav Gosh

  The chief engineer was a grizzled old veteran. He gave Phulboni an odd smile and said: 'There hasn't been a stationmaster at Renupur for more than thirty years.'

  Then the guard appeared, obsequious as ever, and led Phulboni to an empty first class carriage. Later, when the train had started off towards Darbhanga, he sidled up and whispered in the writer's ear: 'You were lucky; at least you are still alive.'

  'Why?' Phulboni demanded. 'Have there been others who…?'

  'The year I first began this job,' the guard said, 'in '94, there was another who was not so fortunate: he died there – in just that way, lying on the rails, at dawn. The corpse was so mangled that they never discovered exactly who it was, but it was rumoured that he was a foreigner.'

  He gave Phulboni a melancholy smile. 'No one ever goes near that station at night,' he said.

  'Why didn't you tell me this before?' said Phulboni.

  'I tried to,' said the guard, with a crooked smile. 'But you would not have believed me. You would have laughed and said, "These villagers, their heads are full of fantasies and superstitions." Everyone knows that for city men like you such warnings always have the opposite effect.'

  Acknowledging the truth of this Phulboni apologized and asked the guard to sit and recount everything he knew.

  For many years, the guard said, the signal-room had been home to a young lad called Laakhan. The boy had drifted in from somewhere up the line soon after the station was first built. He was a stray, orphaned by famine, with a thin, wasted body and a deformed hand. The signal-room was empty then, because no railway employee would agree to live in such a lonely, isolated place. So Laakhan made it his home. The guards and stokers who passed through taught him how to use a signal lamp and work the switches. He made himself useful to the railways and they let him stay.

  The boy was in his teens when a stationmaster was finally found for Renupur. As it turned out this stationmaster was an orthodox, upper-caste man: he took an instant dislike to the lad, looking on him as an affront to himself. He told the villagers that Laakhan was worse than untouchable; that he carried contagion; that he was probably the child of a prostitute; that his misshapen left hand was a mark of hereditary disease. He tried his best to drive the boy away from the station, but Laakhan had nowhere to go. The boy built a bamboo shack on the tracks of the unused siding and tried to keep out of sight.

  This drove the stationmaster into an even greater fury. On a moonless Amavasya night, during a storm, the stationmaster tried to kill the boy by switching the points and leading him before a train. But no one knew the station better than Laakhan and he managed to escape. Instead it was the stationmaster who tripped on a rail and fell before the train.

  That was the last time that Renupur had a stationmaster.

  Phulboni's mind was full of questions: having escaped a similar death he was consumed with curiosity about the boy's fate. 'Tell me more,' he begged the guard. 'What became of Laakhan? I must know; you must tell me.'

  'There is not much else to tell,' the guard said. 'What people say is that he hid himself on a train and went to Calcutta. They say he was living at Sealdah Station when a woman found him and gave him a home.'

  'Is that all?' Phulboni persisted. 'Who was the woman? What happened to Laakhan?'

  The guard pulled an apologetic face. 'That's all I know,' he said. 'Except…'

  'Except what?'

  'The man who was my predecessor at this job once told me something. He said that he had talked to the foreigner – the one who died at Renupur. He, the foreigner, had come up to him on the platform, just as he was about to flag the train out. He said that he had been travelling with a young man, a native of Renupur. As a sahib, naturally, the foreigner was in first class while this other man was in third. But now he could not find the young man: he had disappeared. My predecessor could not help him; he hadn't noticed anyone else getting off at Renupur. The foreigner was very annoyed and said he would wait at the station. The guard, my predecessor, told him that whatever happened he should not stay the night at the station. He did everything he could to make him leave, but the sahib only laughed, and said, "Oh, you villagers… '"

  Chapter 40

  'OH MY GOD!' Urmila cried suddenly, tugging at the booth's plastic curtain. 'What?' said Murugan.

  'Sonali-di,' Urmila replied. 'I have to find a telephone.' She darted across the restaurant to the manager's desk at the back and picked up the telephone. Murugan waited to pay the bill and then followed her over.

  She was staring at the receiver in shock when he caught up with her.

  'Sonali-di's disappeared,' she said. 'She's not in her office, and she's not at home. She missed a staff meeting this morning and they've been trying to contact her. She hasn't been seen since last night. No one's answering the phone at her flat. Apparently I was the last person to talk to her.'

  'What time was that?'

  'About ten thirty, I think,' Urmila said. 'We went to her flat together, and I left about then.'

  'I've got news for you, Calcutta,' Murugan said. 'I saw her after you did.'

  'What?' Urmila cried. 'But you don't even know her.'

  'But I still saw her,' said Murugan. 'I went out to my balcony at about one o'clock last night, and I saw her getting out of a taxi: she went into number three Robinson Street… '

  With a wail of despair Urmila pushed him aside: 'Why didn't you tell me?' She ran to the road and flagged down a taxi. 'Come on,' she called out to him, over her shoulder. 'We have to hurry.' Murugan climbed in after her and slammed the door shut.

  'Robinson Street,' Urmila said to the taxi driver. 'Between Loudon and Rawdon.'

  Then she turned to Murugan. 'We have to find Sonali-di,' she said. 'We have to try and warn her.'

  'Why her?' said Murugan.

  'Don't you see?' Urmila said. 'Because she's in it too: she told me that story.'

  The evening rush hour was just beginning and traffic was very heavy once the taxi got to Chowringhee. Urmila sat hunched over the front seat, urging the driver on.

  When Murugan spoke to Urmila again it was in a voice that was unaccustomedly quiet. 'Listen, Calcutta,' he said. 'You've been on the move since this morning; maybe you should give yourself a timeout here, just to think things over.'

  'Think what over?' said Urmila distractedly. They were on Theatre Road now, beside the Kenilworth Hotel, and the air was fragrant with the smell of kababs.

  'About whether you want to get any deeper into this,' said Murugan.

  'What else could I do?' she said, in surprise.

  'We could stop the taxi right here,' said Murugan. 'And you could get out and go home; go back to whatever you were doing.'

  A shadow fell over Urmila's face.

  'Go back home?' Urmila said to herself, under her breath, resting her eyes on the neat, bright buildings of the British Council. If she went home she would have to buy fish on the way. Her mother wouldn't believe her if she said Romen Haldar wasn't really going to come to their house in the evening, to offer her brother a First Division contract. She could hear her already; 'Oh, you don't care about us at all: your family means nothing to you; all you care about is yourself and your career; that's why no one will marry you; that's what Mrs Gangopadhyaya said the other day… '

  Urmila turned to Murugan with an emphatic shake of her head. 'No,' she said. 'I don't want to go home.'

  'It's your life, Calcutta,' Murugan said philosophically. 'You know best.'

  A build-up of traffic at the Loudon Road crossing brought the taxi rattling to a halt. Urmila turned away from the Pierre Cardin boutique at the corner. Her eyes were brimming with curiosity as they settled on Murugan.

  'What about you?' she said to Murugan. 'Why are you going on with this? What's kept you at it so long?'

  'Can't you tell?' Murugan said.

  Urmila shook her head: 'No.'

  Murugan gave her a grim smile. 'It's not me,' he said. 'It's what's inside me.'

  'Do you mean malaria?' />
  'That too,' said Murugan.

  'What else?' said Urmila.

  There was a brief pause, and then in an undertone, Murugan said: 'Syphilis.'

  Urmila flinched, making an involuntary shrinking movement. Murugan turned on her, eyes narrowed. 'You don't have to worry,' he said. 'It's not contagious: I was officially cured a long time ago.'

  'I'm sorry…' Urmila could not trust herself to say any more.

  Murugan kept his eyes on the shops, food-stalls and travel agencies that flanked the road. With his face averted, he said: 'I guess it started somewhere over there.' He made a vague gesture at the skyline. 'On Free School Street. I was fifteen: I'd been to see a film at the Globe, after school. I was walking past New Market, on my way home, when a guy came up to me and whispered in my ear. I guessed he was a pimp: I'd been reading a lot of American detective novels. I was in my ink-stained school pants and a sweaty end-of-the-day shirt, with my textbooks and class notes slung over my shoulder. He was wearing a green checked lungi, and he had a thin pencil moustache and tiny bloodshot eyes. He winked before he whispered in my ear and gave me this toothy little grin. I could smell the paan and stale liquor on his breath. It was irresistible. All I had was five rupees but that was enough. He led me down one of those tiny alleys around Free School Street, just around the corner from the Armenian school, where William Thackeray was born. We went up a dark, stinking staircase that looked like it led to the anus of the earth. But then we got to the top and suddenly there was this great sunburst of light and noise and voices and music: it was like walking into a fairground – a huge room, with little curtained cubicles all around it, and vendors selling paan and tea, and all these women sitting on chairs lined up against the wall, with flowers around their wrists. I never looked back; I was hooked. I loved them; I loved everything about them, even the way they laughed behind my back when I was running down the stairs, afterwards, my pants half-unbuttoned.'

  He fell silent, smiling to himself.

  'And then,' he said, 'the lesions began to appear: scabs and sores and loosening teeth. I changed the way I dressed; I wore a lot of clothes, more and more, even on those June days when the heat is like a jackhammer waiting to hit you in the face. I managed to hide the scabs for, oh, I don't know how long, for months anyway – even though it hurt by then, God, it hurt. And when it was finally caught there was no disguising it. That was why my family had to leave the city: the shame.'

  'But syphilis is curable now, isn't it?' Urmila said. 'With antibiotics?'

  'Sure,' said Murugan. 'I got cured. They can cure it now – except for what it does to your head.'

  Chapter 41

  IT WAS THE RAIN, blowing in through the flapping shutters, that roused Sonali. Her eyes were gummy and swollen; she had trouble prying her eyelids open. She was lying on her side, staring at a ribbon of dust that had gathered along the edge of a wooden floor.

  She had no idea where she was, the wall could have been any wall, anywhere; she did not know how long she had been there or what she was doing on the floor. Her first instinct was to go rigid, to keep absolutely still, lizardlike, to make herself invisible.

  Lying motionless on the floor, she began to listen, concentrating her mind on her hearing. Slowly she began to pick up the sound of cars, on a road nearby; a Vividh-Bharati jingle on a transistor radio; bicycle bells, a backfiring engine, all the usual street noises, but somewhere in the distance. But here in her immediate vicinity, there were no sounds at all; she could hear nothing – nothing that gave her any clues about where she was or whether there was anyone else in the room.

  And then she heard something, not so far away as the sounds of the street: a metallic creak, the sound of an unoiled hinge, of a heavy gate swinging slowly open. A moment later she heard footsteps, crunching on gravel: they seemed to be getting closer, coming towards her.

  She turned over, slowly, and discovered that she was lying on the floor of a narrow wooden gallery. Pushing herself up she inched to the edge and looked over.

  She found herself looking down upon an enormous empty room. A fading, twilight glow was shining through a broken skylight. She spotted a small pile of ashes and halfburnt twigs at the far end of the cavernous room. Now it started to come flooding back: the staircase, the noise, the smoke, the crowd of people, gathered around a body. With a gasp she leaned over again, looking all around her: there was no sign of anyone; the room was empty.

  The footsteps were inside the house now; they were downstairs, probably somewhere near the staircase. Sonali drew her head quickly back, and lay still, her breath pumping torpidly in and out of her lungs.

  They were climbing up the rotten staircase; she could hear their shoes on the steel scaffolding. She heard the sound of a voice – a man's voice, somewhere outside. Then there was a woman's voice too; still muffled, although their footsteps were somewhere beneath her, very close to the reception room.

  She heard the feet entering, pacing back and forth. Then all she could hear was the sound of the blood pounding in her ears. She closed her eyes, biting her lip, trying to summon the courage to look down.

  'There's no one here,' a voice said. It was a woman speaking – someone familiar, someone she knew.

  She raised her head, very slowly, and inched forward, to the edge. Then a cry burst from her lips: 'Urmila!'

  'Sonali-di!' Urmila gasped, spinning around. Simultaneously Murugan shouted: 'She's up there, come on.' Sonali allowed her head to sink to the floor, in relief.

  Then they were up beside her, in the gallery, helping her down the ladder, holding her hands, and she was crying, fighting for her breath, and between her sobs she heard herself trying to speak, struggling to say something coherent, but the words came out all wrong, all mixed up, in a meaningless jumble.

  'Calm down Sonali-di,' Urmila said. 'It's all right; we're here now. Tell me: why are you here? When did you come?'

  Sonali tightened her grip on Urmila's hand.

  'I came late last night,' she said. 'I came to look for Romen; somehow I knew he would be here.'

  'Did you find him?' Urmila asked.

  Sonali began to sob again.

  'That's the strange part, Urmila,' she said, 'I don't know.' Sonali began to tell them about the taxi to Robinson Street, climbing the stairs, the smoke, the people, finding the gallery, the boy, the woman in the sari, the fire, the body…

  'And then she put out her hands,' said Sonali, 'and touched the body that was lying in front of the fire and called him Laakhan. Just before I passed out I managed to see who it was.'

  She choked.

  'Who was it?' said Urmila.

  'It was Romen.' Sonali began to sob.

  'And the woman,' Murugan broke in, 'who was she? Did you know her?'

  Sonali shook her head, from side to side, wiping her tear. streaked face on her blouse.

  'I'm not sure,' she said. 'She looked so familiar, but I couldn't remember.'

  Then Urmila took her hand, elbowing Murugan out of the way. 'Try, Sonali-di,' she said. 'Try and remember. Who was it?'

  Sonali's eyes widened as she looked into Urmila's face. 'It was someone you know, Urmila,' she said. 'I'm sure of that: that's why she seemed familiar – someone I've heard you talk about, someone I haven't seen in years.'

  Suddenly, Urmila rocked back on her heels, dropping Sonali's hand. 'No,' she whimpered, her hands flying to her mouth. 'No, not Mrs… '

  'Yes,' said Sonali. 'That's who it was – Mrs Aratounian.'

  Chapter 42

  ANTAR WOKE UP to find his bedclothes drenched in sweat and his throat burning. He stumbled to the door, and looked down the corridor: the kitchen seemed to slide away from him, receding into the distance. He felt his knees weakening and had to lean against the wall to keep himself upright. He turned his head to look at the palm of his hand, and saw that it was trembling, shimmering against the flat whiteness of the wall. In rising panic he clapped his hands against his cheeks, his chest, his sides, only to discover that he wa
s shaking all over.

  He took one step towards the kitchen, still leaning against the wall. It seemed a little easier now, he was just a couple of feet from the open doorway of his living room, halfway down the corridor, between the kitchen and the bedroom. Leaning forward, he reached for the edge of the doorway, trying to pull himself along.

  His fingers found the doorway and took a grip on it. Then a shiver ran through his outstretched arm and he snatched his hand back, recoiling, as though from an unexpected touch. He could feel the hairs bristling on his face as he stood leaning on the wall, biting his knuckles: it was as though something were in that room, a presence that his body had sensed before he knew it was there.

  He edged forward, slowly, pushed himself away from the wall and stepped through the door. He stood there transfixed, disbelieving. His knees buckled and he fell to the floor.

  Sitting gnomelike in the middle of the living room was a naked man. A blanket of matted, ropy hair hung halfway down a swollen, distended belly; his upper body was encrusted with dead leaves and straw, and his thighs were caked with mud and excrement. His hands were resting in his lap, bound together by a pair of steel handcuffs.

  He was staring at Antar with bloodshot, grime-caked eyes; his lips drawn back in a grin, baring yellow, decaying teeth.

  'What's the matter?' a voice cried out suddenly, filling the room through Ava's concealed sound outlets. 'You wanted to see me, didn't you? I'm just a little early, that's all.'

  Antar picked himself up and made his way slowly towards Ava's control panel. He found himself skirting around the edges of the room, with his back to the walls, keeping as far away from the figure as possible, as though it were a real presence.

  'Where have you been?' the figure shouted after him. 'Why have you kept me waiting so long?'

  Antar's eyes fell on the mud-caked thighs and he turned away, with an involuntary shudder. Reaching for Ava's keyboard, he rewrote the vectors of the image.