by Amitav Ghosh
Looking steadily into his eyes, Mrs Burnham said: ‘Paulette Lambert. Can you deny that you have seduced and violated that sweet innocent girl?’
Zachary’s mouth fell open and he stared at her in disbelief, temporarily bereft of words. ‘That’s impossible,’ he spluttered. ‘Paulette could not have said anything like that. It’s not possible.’
‘But she did. I heard it from her own lips. In this very room.’
‘And what exactly did she say?’
‘I will tell you, Mr Reid: it happened last year, when Paulette was living with us. I had summoned her here in order to inform her that Mr Justice Kendalbushe was desirous of suing for her hand in marriage. I will not conceal from you that I was eager for her to accept. I had grown exceedingly fond of Paulette in the short time that she spent with us. I knew that if she accepted the judge’s offer she would remain nearby, and the tender companionship that she and I had come to enjoy would be preserved and prolonged. But it was not to be: despite all my dumbcowings Paulette was adamant in her refusal – so much so that my suspicions were aroused. I asked if she had lost her heart to another. She did not deny it, so I asked if the chuckeroo in question was you – and again she did not deny it. My suspicions were further inflamed by this, so I asked if she had compromised herself with you. Again she did not deny it: to the contrary she confirmed to me that she was … with child!’
‘Impossible,’ protested Zachary. ‘Mrs Burhnam, I am not a stranger to the act of procreation, as I have said, and I can assure you that nothing like that transpired between Paulette and me.’
‘I am sorry, Mr Reid,’ she retorted, ‘but I am sure you will admit that it is impossible to give any credence to the word of someone such as yourself, a chokra of acknowledged lewdness, who thinks nothing of “polishing the pin” in full view of the riverfront – a man so lacking in self-control as to be aroused, in a public place, by a woman who is almost twice his age!’
‘Oh come, Mrs Burnham,’ he said weakly. ‘Surely you are not twice my age?’
‘If I were three times your age, I doubt that it would make any difference to a budmash as wayward as yourself!’ Mrs Burnham’s voice rose: ‘Let me tell you, Mr Reid, that from the day Paulette ran away from this house I knew that you were to blame for her disappearance. I did not doubt for a minute that she had run off to give birth to your bastard child. If I have not revealed this to anyone, even my own husband, it is because I did not wish to add to her shame – but you may be sure that I did not intend for it to pass without retribution either. From the day you arrived here I have been determined to make you see the error of your ways, and to make restitution for what you have done to Paulette.’
Mrs Burnham’s manner had grown increasingly heated as she was speaking and two bright spots of colour had appeared on her cheeks. The fraying of her composure had a strangely calming effect on Zachary, and when she fell silent he took a moment or two to think of how best to persuade her of the absolute groundlessness of her conjectures.
‘You are certainly right about one thing, Mrs Burnham,’ he said at length, in a level tone. ‘It is true that I felt very powerfully drawn to Paulette, from the moment of our first meeting, on the Ibis, last year. But we were alone together only a couple of times and all our meetings ended badly, with quarrels and arguments. And yes, once there was a kiss, but that was all. I even asked her to marry me one time, but she wouldn’t hear of it. As for being seduced or compromised by me, that would be laughable if it were not offensive. She was never in the least danger of that. If she was with child, it certainly wasn’t because of me …’
Here, suddenly, a thought occurred to him that made the words wither on his lips.
He sat back and looked up at the ceiling, fingering his chin, as ideas and possibilities raced through his mind.
‘What is it, Mr Reid?’
Lowering his gaze, he saw that she had put her notebook aside and was leaning forward in her chair, watching him with an expression of the most intense curiosity. This sent a thrill of satisfaction through him; it was as if there had been a sudden shift in the balance between them, as happens on a ship at the change of watch, when the powers of command are transferred from one officer to another.
‘Oh it’s nothing, Mrs Burnham,’ he said, making a pretence of off-handedness. ‘Just a thought that came into my mind.’
‘What is it? Please tell me.’
He paused to savour the note of supplication in her voice. ‘I don’t know if I should, Mrs Burnham,’ he said.
‘But why not?’
‘That’s the thing, Mrs Burnham: this isn’t about me and Paulette. It concerns you too and may cause you great distress.’
Mrs Burnham’s eyes dropped. ‘Mr Reid,’ she said, in a dry, taut voice, ‘tell me …’ – it was she who now had to pause to mop her face – ‘tell me, is it something to do with … with my husband?’
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
She clasped her hands and pressed them to her chest. ‘Mr Reid, you must speak. I need to know.’
Her tone was one of entreaty, all trace of her former imperious-ness having now disappeared. It seemed hardly possible that this was the same woman who a short while before had been issuing veiled threats, in a voice of steely command.
‘Are you sure, Mrs Burnham?’ said Zachary. ‘There’ll be no turning back, you know.’
‘Yes. I’m sure.’
‘Very well then.’
A peal of thunder sounded nearby and Zachary waited for the sound to rumble through the room.
‘Mrs Burnham – I hope you will not regret hearing this, but here it is. One night, soon after she ran away from your house, Paulette arranged to meet with me. She told me that she did not want ever to return to Bethel and begged me to get her a passage to Mauritius, on the Ibis. I asked why she was so desperate to go, and she told me she wanted to escape from Calcutta, at all costs, because she was afraid of …’
‘Mr Burnham?’
‘Yes. So I asked her if anything had happened between herself and your husband and she answered by telling me a strange story.’
‘Please go on. I am listening.’
‘She said that while she was here Mr Burnham would often call her into his study, to give her scriptural lessons in private.’
‘Go on, Mr Reid.’
‘She said that as the lessons progressed Mr Burnham had asked her to do … certain things.’ ‘What things?’
‘Well, I may as well say it: what he wanted was a larruping – I guess he likes the feel of a girl’s hand on his rump. Don’t understand it myself, but there’re all sorts in this world.’
‘Did she do it?’
Zachary nodded. ‘She agreed because he had been kind to her and she did not wish to appear ungrateful. But one day she realized that what she was doing was very dangerous so she decided to run away.’
‘Please be honest with me, Mr Reid – did she run away because she had been seduced? Violated?’
‘It seems almost certain to me now that she was,’ said Zachary, ‘but she did not say so at the time. She said rather, that she had decided to escape before it came to that. I believed her story then, but now that I’ve heard your tale it seems clear to me that Paulette was hiding something – lying, not to put too fine a point on it.’
Mrs Burnham began to sob quietly into her hands, covering her face.
‘But Mrs Burnham,’ said Zachary quickly. ‘No matter what happened between your husband and Paulette, this I can tell you: Paulette was not actually with child – what she expressed to you was only, perhaps, the worst of her fears.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because we met again, months later, on the Ibis, and had she been with child, it would certainly have shown by that time. But there was no sign of anything like that. I hope you will find some consolation in that.’
‘Consolation?’ said Mrs Burnham, sobbing into her cupped hands. ‘Oh Mr Reid, how can you speak to me of consolation … when you have just co
nfirmed my worst fears and suspicions?’
The heaving of her shoulders had loosened the stays of her robe and a lapel had dropped, to provide a glimpse of the nightdress she was wearing underneath: Zachary saw that the thin, cotton cloth was straining against the swell of her bosom. Drawing his eyes guiltily away, he said: ‘So you had some suspicion, then?’
She nodded. ‘In the past, yes – I had often wondered whether there might be something untoward between my husband and the young girls we sometimes sheltered in our house. But I would never have thought it possible with Paulette, who seemed to me the purest spirit I had ever come across. That was why I lavished my affection on her. And now I don’t know which betrayal is worse, hers or my husband’s.’
Burying her head in her hands she began to weep. Slowly her statuesque figure seemed to crumple and her head fell almost to her knees.
Zachary rose from his chair and went to kneel beside her. ‘Mrs Burnham,’ he said quietly. ‘You are not the only one who has been betrayed, you know. I too have been lied to and betrayed by Paulette. And I thought she was the love of my life.’
He couldn’t tell whether she had heard him, so he put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Mrs Burnham?’
At his touch she raised her face and narrowed her eyes. ‘Why Mr Reid …’ she whispered, her eyes straying to his head. ‘Oh, look at you – your hair is still wet … from the rain, I suppose.’
She stretched out a hand and touched his dark hair, gingerly, with a knuckle. Then her fingers opened, entwining themselves in his curls, and suddenly she pulled his face towards her lips.
He responded with such eagerness that her armchair began to tilt slowly backwards and then fell over sideways, spilling them both on the floor and knocking the turban off her head. With his lips still locked on hers, Zachary began to tug at the lapels of her robe. In the process of sloughing it off they rolled over once, and then again. Then his fingers went to the neck of her nightdress and he pulled at the cloth. When he was unable to make any headway there, he lost patience and tore through the soft cotton to reveal her breasts.
Then it was her turn to claw at his shirt which came apart suddenly, with a tearing sound. He was trying at the same time to kick off his drawers and breeches and in the midst of their struggles they tumbled over each other again, bumping into something which fell over with a great crash of splintering wood and shattered glass.
Zachary looked up, startled, but she pulled his face down again. ‘It’s just the brandy, and the table,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘It doesn’t matter. No one will hear it over the storm.’
Her torn nightdress had wound itself around their shoulders now, and his half-discarded drawers and breeches were wrapped around their ankles. When they tried to move they began to roll in the other direction and crashed into something else.
Zachary’s lips were on her breasts and he didn’t bother to look up. But he caught the sound of her voice, whispering: ‘It’s just my tamancha.’
Throwing her arms around him, she wrapped her legs around his hips, clinging to his body as though she were holding on to a branch in a storm. Then a moan broke from her parted lips and grew slowly into a prolonged, rising cry that ended with a steep arching of her body. Suddenly she went limp in Zachary’s arms and he too stopped moving – now it was as if a fuse had been lit in the depths of his body, and a spark were going around and around, in a descending spiral, travelling down a wire to the bottom of a very deep mineshaft. When the wire ran out there occurred a detonation that shook him to the core, creating a blast that rattled his bones and wrenched his muscles. When the explosion reached his head everything turned yellow, as if in the light of a flame, and then slowly, the glow faded away, to be replaced by darkness.
Afterwards, the sensation of returning to awareness was like none that Zachary had ever experienced before. It wasn’t like rising upwards, from darkness towards light; rather it was like falling from a cloud. He had no conception of how much time had passed but he knew that he was still on the floor, his limbs entwined with Mrs Burnham’s.
When he stirred and tried to disentangle himself, she whispered into his ear: ‘No not yet: wait a little. Tomorrow we will wake to an eternity of guilt and remorse. Since we have only this one night together, we may as well deserve our punishment.’
Zachary pulled his head back in surprise. ‘What do you mean, Mrs Burnham? Are you sayin there won’t be another time?’
She brushed her lips tenderly against his face. ‘Yes, m’dear – I’m sorry but it must be so. This is the last and only time. Don’t you see? It is too dangerous – if even a whiff were to reach Mr Burnham, he would murder us both. It is too great a risk.’
‘But why should any whiff reach him? We can be careful, can’t we? There will be other nights when the house is empty, surely?’
She shook her head and gave him a melancholy smile. ‘And to what end? Where can it lead? You’re a penniless boy, and I’m a wife and mother, much older than you.’
‘How old are you then?’
‘Thirty-six. And you?’
‘Twenty-one. Almost twenty-two.’
She kissed him on the forehead. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘I’m old enough to be your aunt. You’ll grow tired of me soon enough. Let us forget about the future and make the best of the hours that are left to us.’
*
The subedar’s tent was at the head of the sepoy lines, facing the parade ground. The tents of the English officers lay on the other side: in one of them an immensely enlarged silhouette of Captain Mee’s head could be seen, projected upon the canvas by a brightly glowing lamp.
The subedar’s tent was also well illuminated, with candles and lamps. Assembled inside were some fifteen men. Of these a dozen were Kesri’s fellow afsars – NCOs of the Pacheesi. They were all blood relatives of the subedar: unlike Kesri, who was in his soiled uniform, they were all dressed in off-duty clothes, dhotis and ungahs.
As for the visitors, Kesri recognized only one: Chandan Singh, Deeti’s brother-in-law – a scrawny youth with a slack mouth and darting eyes. Kesri had met him once before, at the cantonment in Barrackpore. He had come to take Hukam Singh back to their village, after his discharge from the army. On that occasion he had especially sought Kesri out to thank him for saving Hukam Singh’s life.
It was on Kesri’s lips now to say some customary words of condolence to Chandan Singh, in acknowledgement of his brother’s death. But when Chandan Singh turned to look at him the words died on Kesri’s lips – the youth’s face was screwed into an angry scowl; his eyes were bloodshot and filled with rage.
Kesri realized now that something was very wrong. He noticed also that he was the only man standing – the subedar had not invited him to take a seat even though everyone else was sitting, including a couple of men who were junior to him in rank. It dawned on Kesri now that this was not just a deliberate insult: it was as if he had been summoned before a tribunal, a cross between a court martial and a caste panchayat, with the subedar presiding as the supreme judge.
Kesri stiffened, as if on parade, and turned to face Nirbhay Singh.
Subedar sah’b, he said, you sent for me?
Yes, Havildar Kesri Singh, said the subedar. I sent for you. It is because we have received some very serious news today.
The subedar’s voice was slow, measured and grave. Kesri recognized his tone, because he had watched him testify at several courts martial: his bearing was the same today as it had been on those occasions. His expression was one of unsmiling gravity; his words flowed at a slower pace than usual and were more clearly enunciated. The pitch was perfectly steady and when he wanted to emphasize something he did it not by raising his voice but by stroking his moustache.
Some time ago, said the subedar, looking directly into Kesri’s eyes, I told you that I had received a letter with news of deaths in my family. I told you that my brother Bhyro Singh had passed away, as also my nephew Hukam Singh, with whom you had served in Burma, and who was married t
o your sister. Today we have learnt much more about their passing, from Chandan Singh and these others from his village. They have travelled for months to bring us the news. We have learnt that the matter was much more complicated than we had thought.
The subedar paused: And we have learnt also that you are implicated in it.
Me? cried Kesri. But how is that possible? I was here, with all of you. I did not even know of these things. How can I be implicated?
Through your sister.
Here a slight tremor entered the subedar’s voice and he paused to stroke his moustache and collect himself. When he resumed, his voice was steady again.
It appears, havildar, that your sister had been having illicit relations with another man – a herdsman of low caste.
At this a collective sound, a groan of horror and revulsion, rose from the assembled men. Kesri stared at the subedar for a moment, in disbelief. Then he cried out: Impossible! I know my sister – I know she would not do anything like that.
Now Chandan Singh, who had been crouching tensely in a corner, lost control of himself and began to shout. If you knew that bitch, he screamed, then you would know that she is a randi – a whore! And a murderer too. She poisoned my mother … and my brother …
Chup rah! The subedar signalled to Chandan Singh to hold his tongue: It’s not your place to speak here.
Then he turned to Kesri again.
What we have learnt today, havildar, is that your sister ran off with the herdsman immediately after Hukam Singh’s death. It seems she had made preparations for her escape even before – she had sent her daughter into hiding. This is why there is a strong suspicion that she poisoned Hukam Singh; but we will let that pass since it cannot be proven. What is certain, in any case, is that the two of them had planned their escape with great care: their intention was to pose as girmitiyas and run off to the island of Mauritius, across the sea. But on the way they were recognized by my brother, Bhyro Singh – that was how he met his end. It was your sister’s lover who killed him, with her help.