Goddess of Fire

by Bharti Kirchner

  “Well, perhaps the next time you see Egon …”

  “Of course. As soon as I have some leads for you, I’ll send a messenger. I must go back home now and rest.”

  Three days later, a courier wearing a huge white headdress rapped at my door. “Teema has located your brothers,” the courier said cheerfully. “Tomorrow she’ll arrive here in an oxcart and take you to where they can be found.”

  While doing my chores that evening, I dreamt about meeting my brothers. I dreamt of how they would leap in joy when I approached them in the karkhana, their joyful outbursts of “Didi, Didi!” as they ran to meet me. “Come, let’s get out of here,” I would say. Then I would execute the most important part of my plan: stealing them away from their workplace, escorting them to the waiting oxcart, and riding back with them to my temporary residence here. I hadn’t been this happy in a long time. My brothers would no longer be slaves. What more could I ask for? “We’ll follow you to Cossimbazar and live in a mansion,” Nupur would say, sitting at the table and helping himself to big portions of sweetmeats. “We’ll fly kites there. I haven’t flown a kite in a very long time.” Between bites, Nitya would giggle. Seated across from them, I would look lovingly at them. Finally, we would be together, a family once again.

  Someone knocked at the door and I came back to reality.

  The next day, Teema and I rode a hooded oxcart to a far corner of the city. I carried a bamboo-leaf box stuffed with colorful sweetmeats for my brothers. According to Teema’s Dutch patron, two boys answering to my brothers’ names were, indeed, working in a carpet-weaving center. I could hardly wait. Before long, we left the shiny waterfront area with latticed windows and lavish gardens to enter a more congested section of town where the roads were uncared for and the ride bumpy. Soon we reached a dilapidated neighborhood with broken doors and the odor of fetid garbage. A limbless beggar sat on a corner and moaned. Not far from him, a crow menaced a lone child. A man in tattered clothes, sitting nearby, swatted at a fly, oblivious to the child’s discomfort. A wild beast I couldn’t recognize bellowed loudly nearby. As the cart approached a cramped lane, the driver suddenly pulled the oxen to a stop. “I can’t go any further,” he said, turning his worried gaze toward us. “You have to walk from here. Please be careful, this neighborhood is full of hoodlums.”

  We descended from the cart and entered the dirty narrow lane, walking single file, repulsed by the stench of urine. Looking down at my silver brocade sari, I felt out of place. Teema walked ahead of me.

  A large, windowless, thatch-roofed building loomed before us. “That’s the carpet-weaving center,” Teema said. “It fits the description Egon gave me. A prison, he called it.”

  It did indeed look like a prison, and to complete the picture, a doorkeeper, holding a bamboo baton, was posted at the entrance.

  “Oh, heavens,” I said, marching toward the building. “How do we get in?”

  “We’ve timed our arrival perfectly,” Teema whispered. “The main guardsman is on a break. His assistant, the young man standing there, has been bribed to let us in.”

  The doorkeeper made a sharp turn on his heels and faced us. He had a narrow face and an expression that grew even more wary as we approached him. Teema flashed him a smile and mentioned Egon’s name.

  His eyes lit up; he said, with a slight bow, “Salaam, salaam.” After a brief hesitation, he unlocked the door. “I am not supposed to let anybody in. That’s a strict order from the authorities, so please, only a few minutes.”

  “We’ll be quick,” I said, slipping through the door, Teema behind me.

  In the long semi-dark room, under the yellow-brown glow of lamps, at least twenty boys, all between the ages of nine and fifteen, huddled in small groups. Squatting, they wove carpets in silence, deftly tying every knot by hand. Scattered about them were various equipment for weaving. We walked the length of the room, the air heavy and damp and smelling of unwashed boys. A black centipede made its way across the room. I cast my glance in every direction but didn’t spot my brothers.

  “Nupur! Nitya!” I finally called out. “Are you here?”

  A few boys stared at me, their eyes reflecting fear at the intrusion. A cold silence hung over the room. We weren’t wanted here.

  Finally, I spotted Nupur and Nitya. They were positioned at the far corner of the room, their backs toward me. I recognized them from the shape of their heads, from their sitting postures, and hastened toward them.

  Nupur’s eyes were focused on a vertical loom, a complex of bamboo sticks suspended by strong jute ropes displaying a nearly finished rug. He started and looked up at me, eyes deep in their sockets, his once-glowing complexion now muddy, his ribs protruding from underneath a flimsy tunic. It was obvious that he’d been working long hours and was not being fed well. Seated on a mat next to him, Nitya hunched over a horizontal loom, tightening a finished row of knots with a small comb. He glanced up from the loom with frightened eyes. He was much thinner than when I’d last seen him.

  To my surprise, neither of them scrambled to their feet. Their aloofness was like a punch to the stomach. I had practically raised them until the day of my first wedding, and here they sat, staring at me as at a stranger.

  I heard a commotion at the entrance and turned. A guard dressed in a long coat of white cotton marched in. A moment or two passed before I recognized the familiar tall familiar figure.

  Tariq!

  “Why is this door open?” Tariq barked at the doorkeeper. “Who are these women? Why did you let them in?”

  The doorkeeper mumbled a few words of apology. Tariq strode in my direction. His one good eye blinked in surprise, even as his face hardened.

  “Maria! What do you want here?”

  “My brothers,” I said, pointing. “I’ve finally found them, Nupur and Nitya. This is no place for children of their age. I’ll take them home. They’re eager to go with me.”

  Nitya shrank against the wall. On glancing at me a second time, however, he began to waver. I knew from the forlorn look in his eyes that he wanted to spring into my arms.

  Standing across from Nupur, Tariq asked him in a menacing voice, “Do you know this woman? Is she really your sister?”

  Nupur stared at the floor. Perhaps afraid of being punished, a beating with a baton, or worse, perhaps having been imprisoned for so long, he had begun to see these walls as stability and felt safer in here. “No,” he eventually mumbled. “My sister is a goddess.”

  Tariq laughed out loud, a big, ugly laugh. In a mocking tone, he said to me, “Maria, why don’t you fly before us with your invisible wings, so we can see your divine powers?”

  Her face contorted, Teema commanded from behind me, “You mustn’t insult her like that.”

  Tariq gave both of us a stern look. “You must be mistaken. These two boys come from a poor family. Their parents have willingly given them to us. They’re well cared for here. You’re causing far too much trouble. They have to finish their work by a certain hour or they won’t get their meals.”

  “How can you have such a rule for young children?” Teema asked, eyes burning with rage.

  “I didn’t make the rule,” Tariq said.

  “Nupur, Nitya, I am really your sister—Moorti.” My own name sounded strange to my ears: another life, another designation swept away by a fiery wind. “They haven’t seen me in a while and they’re feeling shy,” I said to Tariq. “Nupur, Nitya, please, come with me.” Nupur froze in his seat. Nitya wept, making small shrieking sounds. The other boys fidgeted and looked away.

  Tariq turned fiercely toward me and bellowed: “You must leave at once.”

  “Please, Tariq, for all the work I did for you at the Factory, and for the sake of these two young boys who’ve been abducted …”

  For a moment, Tariq seemed to consider, his one good eye fixed in space. Then fear flitted across his face.

  Casting one last teary look at my brothers, I placed the box of sweetmeats at their feet. Neither of them met my eye
s.

  “Do you realize the owners might punish them for receiving gifts from you?” Tariq said.

  “You mustn’t say a word about this to the owner,” Teema said. “Look, I know a friend of the owner. I can make a complaint about you.”

  A shadow passed over Tariq’s face.

  “Suppose I came here once in a while and visited them?” I asked Tariq.

  “No! Bhago! We will remove you if we see you anywhere near this building.”

  My heart a deep wound, I slipped out the door. The return journey seemed bumpier, the roads more dusty, the frenzy of the crowd more incessant. Teema clasped my hand as we rode in silence.

  During the following week, I went back several times to the miserable workshop and pleaded with Tariq, but in vain. He barred me from the vicinity and threatened me with violence if I persisted. My heart ached when I considered the treatment Nupur and Nitya might be receiving from Tariq because of my actions.

  With Teema’s help, I bribed the doorkeeper to deliver a message to my brothers. They were to secretly meet me after dark at a specified spot, a short distance away from the karkhana. The doorkeeper said my brothers were overjoyed at the prospect.

  That evening Teema and I waited with our ox cart driver for hours. Nupur and Nitya did not show up.We scoured the area; they were nowhere to be found. I went back to the house, feeling empty and dejected, wondering what might have gone wrong. I got to know the next day. The bloody, naked bodies of my brothers had been found in an alley in the most crime-ridden section of the town. They’d been sexually molested and bludgeoned to death.

  I lost sleep, appetite, and the ability to think. I couldn’t face anyone and constantly blamed myself. Would they have lived had I not intervened? Although we were rebuffed several times, Teema and I finally managed to contact the Dutch management of the karkhana. A representative told us that the boys had run away on the day of the incident and had likely fallen prey to hoodlums who infested that area.

  I didn’t believe the story. Could it be that Tariq had gotten wind of their planned escape and decided to make an example of them, lest other boys followed in their footsteps? I would never know the truth.

  Their tragic end made me doubly aware of the lack of workers’ rights. Hire them, use them, offer them no protection, and throw them out or murder them when they cause trouble. I vowed to rectify that.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Back in Cossimbazar, hunched over a ledger book one morning, quill and ink before me, I began transcribing necessary trading details in a curly flowing script. Job had assigned me the task of maintaining these books. Yet, as I worked, the sad pale faces of my family would often rise in my memory. It had been three long months since my trip to Hooghly. Gradually, with Job’s help, his insistence that this mansion was my home, I’d come to terms with my loss. I promised myself not to let sadness tear away at my insides, adopting a happier expression whenever I saw myself in the mirror or went out to the market.

  I was free of the past. Now it remained for me to weave my future in whichever pattern I liked.

  I recorded texts, charts, and numerical data, which formed the backbone of the Company’s operation. As goods were purchased from local vendors—silk, cotton, black pepper, mace, indigo dye, and saltpeter—I filled in the pages with the details of the contract: names of the goods and their dimensions, when appropriate; their quantities and prices paid; and details about their sources. Today’s first item: forty bales of the finest silk, with a thread count as high as 2100, bought at a price of four thousand rupees from the best local silk vendor. I paused momentarily. I could barely imagine seeing so much expensive fabric or so much money in one place. Once I came back to mysenses, I resumed my work, allowing the ink on each page to air-dry before flipping to the next.

  The ways of commerce were amazing. There were a few written rules, but many were merely whispered, conveyed by a wink, or generally understood. A handsome bribe to a particularly corrupt Mughal official would stop any bulk package from being inspected too closely. An armed guard must be dispatched with the drivers of oxcarts bearing merchandize to fight off robbers on the overland routes, killing them, if necessary. No matter what, the commission payment to the King of England had to be delivered on time.

  I shut the ledger and pushed it away, picked up another one, and flipped through its pages. This book kept track of ‘homeward’ voyages, the commodities being shipped to England and other corners of Europe. Only much later, when I was older, would I be able to fully imagine an entire ship destined for a distant shore, its cargo consisting of nothing but black pepper, its pungent aroma permeating the vessel. I would be able to visualize the well-heeled merchants in London, in their doublets and breeches, peering out from beneath their wigs, jostling each other and haggling over the price of a few ounces of this exotic spice.

  I transcribed the details slowly and legibly, in a curly flowing script. Decades later, these ledger books would be archived as important historical documents.

  On that day however, at the appointed hour, I rose and walked over to the meeting hall where Job presided, grim-faced. There, in the soft light of the afternoon, sitting in a padded chair, I had to negotiate with a broker, Manu, a stocky man with a surly mien. He traded saltpeter, a crystalline solid used to make explosives. Gordon sahib was the only other Factor present.

  “I can sell this damned material to any number of clients, maybe even at a higher price,” Manu said to me, a glass of limeade in front of him. “Why should I sell it to you?”

  His reference of course was to our competitor, the Dutch; I was sure of that. I thought for a moment and decided to appeal to his sense of compassion. “Because the English need it to protect their homeland and their families. There are wars going on in Europe and England is constantly being threatened with invasion by larger enemies. Without gunpowder, they’ll be defenseless. And be aware also that saltpeter isn’t used over there just for war. The English use it to preserve foods called cheese and sausage, two of their staple items. Do you now see?”

  What I didn’t disclose to him was that the Company could sell saltpeter by the ton and make a handsome profit. From England it could be exported all over Europe because of huge demand for manufacturing gun powder.

  Manu grumbled a bit and we talked more. Eventually he and I settled on an attractive, mutually acceptable rate for this vital commodity. As the session drew to a close, Manu gave me a slight nod. “Hooray,” Gordon broke in, raising his limeade glass to me and the ‘Saltpeter Man’.

  Job’s face remained clouded for reasons I didn’t understand. He had been silent during the meeting. Once outside the meeting hall, I took him aside and asked what he thought of the negotiations.

  Job fixed a warm gaze on me. “A bloody good session, I must say. The Dutch are trying to get a monopoly on saltpeter, but you’ve pried that broker away from them.”

  “Was I too assertive?”

  “I don’t think so. Better for us to develop our connections now. Even the Nawab has decided to go into the saltpeter business, which could mean serious competition for us.” He paused and his voice became somber. “Perhaps even trouble.”

  Why hadn’t he shared this important information with me sooner? Hadn’t he noticed I was intelligent and capable of understanding such matters? I would have explored this situation with other brokers, kept myself up-to-date on the Nawab’s commercial interests. Little did I know that in future this habit of Job, keeping things from me, would put us in harm’s way.

  For the time being, I simply asked, “But why?”

  “Guns are like a lifeline to him, if he wants to hold on to his territory. And he can sell saltpeter to neighboring countries quite easily. But we’ll keep him away from the darn stuff, as best as we can. It’s a symbol of our power, British power, dear love.”

  I looked into Job’s eyes. He’d always have my full support, the negotiations about this particular commodity being the least of it. But at this reference to the Nawab, I fel
t knotted inside. “Won’t we alienate our ruler in the worst way?”

  “If we haven’t already done so.” Job’s eyes strayed to the distant horizon for a moment. He squinted, as though trying to see through the hazy light into the future. “The Nawab is sulking because he has to lower his prices. But it’s business, and we must run a profitable operation. Our shareholders in England demand that, so does the Crown. If we don’t show a profit for three years, our Charter will cease to exist, and we’ll have to shut down the Factory.”

  I shifted on my feet. We were accustomed to obeying our provincial ruler. We sang his glory. Locally, we’d often say goodbyes to each other with an expression such as, “Long live our Nawab, our Protector.” I had never considered competing with him. At the very least, we considered the grave consequence of any form of dissent, given the Nawab’s military might and rumors of his ruthlessness.

  “So, this morning, I’ve negotiated a deal against the Nawab?”

  “Yes, my dear, and which is why you’re considered a rising young Factor. You’re a natural at this.”

  I stole away from him then, the self-satisfaction of moments ago dissipating within me. On the way back to my chamber, I looked skyward, the blazing sun on my face. As I passed by the shiuli bushes and took in their fragrance, I considered the reality of the trading life—cold, cruel, greedy and all-consuming; nonetheless, it had brought out my hidden potential as a tenacious shrewd competitor getting ready to rise and score more wins for the Company.

  Under the scorching sun, the realization thrilled and frightened me.

  Still, I couldn’t have predicted that only months from now, our lives would be in turmoil because of this morning’s business deal, conducted successfully by me, over nothing more than decayed organic matter known as saltpeter.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Our wedding day.

  I awoke in Job’s chamber, rubbed my eyes, and yawned in a leisurely fashion. No ledger books, no meetings, no concerns about alienating the Nawab—this day was special. I, a widow, was to be remarried in a gorgeous ceremony to a kind and loving man. How many people had heard of a formal union between an Englishman and a Bengali woman?