A Rising Man

by Abir Mukherjee

  ‘If it’s a lead, he should have waited and told me tonight, or at least left a message. Where is he now?’

  The sergeant shrugged. ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll speak to him first thing,’ I said. ‘And Surrender-not, there’s a whole host of things we need to progress tomorrow. I want to have a chat with Mr James Buchan. See if you can find out where he is and set up an appointment. I also want to speak to some people who knew MacAuley: his servants and colleagues. Get me names and addresses. Finally, I need you to track down a Christian minister. His name is Gunn or Dunne or something similar. He runs an orphanage up in Dum Dum.’

  Banerjee pulled a small notepad and pencil from his breast pocket and quickly took down my instructions. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll see to it immediately.’

  It was another sultry evening. Humidity so high, the very air seemed wet. Despite this, I decided to walk the mile or so to my lodgings rather than take a rickshaw. Not that I objected to rickshaws, even though Calcutta only had the sort pulled by a man on foot. I didn’t particularly like them, but I didn’t object to them either. There’s nothing dishonourable about pulling a rickshaw. It’s a job, and any job gives a man dignity and puts food on his table. No, I set off on foot because, as any beat copper could tell you, the only way to really know a city is to walk every square inch of it.

  I chose a meandering route back. First along Bow Bazaar, then left onto College Street, an avenue of a thousand rabbit-warren-like bookshops, past the whitewashed porticos of Medical College Hospital, then up towards Machua Bazaar Street. These were the environs of Calcutta University. Established 1857, proclaimed a sign outside. The oldest university in Asia. I guessed that was true, so long as you didn’t count the native institutions, and it probably was best not to, as some of them were a few thousand years older.

  The Royal Belvedere Guest House was situated on Marcus Square and exuded the atmosphere of a seaside guest house back home. The mores of Bournemouth exported to the heat of Bengal. Despite the name, it wasn’t really the sort of place patronised by royalty, but it was clean enough and handy for the office. Above all, it was cheap. One of Lord Taggart’s minions had booked me a room for a month. Enough time, hopefully, to find more permanent lodgings.

  The place was owned by a battleship of a woman called Mrs Tebbit, the wife of a Colonel Tebbit of the Indian Army (retired). She and the Colonel ran a tight ship. Breakfast was served between six thirty and seven thirty sharp, and dinner in the evenings between seven and eight thirty. The food itself made army rations taste like dinner at the Savoy Grill, and sat in the stomach like a sack of stones. The front doors were locked at ten p.m. sharp. However, on account of my war record and position with the Imperial Police, I was afforded the singular honour of my own key.

  I went straight up to my room. It was small and spartan, like a monk’s cell without the proximity to God. A bed, a wardrobe, a corner sink, a desk and a chair. On the wall a print of an English country scene, and a window with a view of the house next door. My few belongings added little in the way of clutter. They were all easily packed into the large Pukka trunk that Sarah had bought for me from Harrods before I left for France. The thing was vast, with compartments for everything a gentleman might need when adventuring overseas. Strong, too. It could have taken a direct hit from a Boche shell and still kept your clothes from getting creased.

  Removing my belt and holster, I draped them on the back of the chair and walked over to the sink, turned on the tap and splashed tepid water on my face.

  Taking off the rest of my uniform, I went and lay face up on the bed. My hands were shaking. The cravings were getting stronger. I told myself I didn’t have much longer to wait, just a few more hours. I turned over, buried my hands under the pillow and contemplated, not for the first time, just what I was doing here.

  Nothing, save maybe for war, quite prepares you for Calcutta. Not the horrors recounted by returning India-men in the smoke-filled rooms of Pall Mall, not the writings of journalists and novelists, not even a five-thousand-mile sea voyage with stops in Alexandria and Aden. Calcutta, when it arrives, is on a scale more alien than anything the imagination of an Englishman can conjure up. Clive of India had called it the most wicked place in the Universe, and his was one of the more positive reviews.

  There was something about the place. It wasn’t just the heat or the god-awful humidity. I was beginning to suspect it was something to do with the people. There’s a special arrogance to be found in the Calcutta Englishman, something you don’t find in many other outposts of empire. It may be born of familiarity. After all, the English have been top dog in Bengal for a hundred and fifty years, and seemed to consider the natives, especially the Bengalis, as rather contemptible. Colonel Tebbit had expounded on it over dinner the previous evening: ‘Of all the races of the empire, Bengalis are the worst. No loyalty, you see. Not like the warriors of the Punjab who’d gladly rush headlong to their deaths if ordered to by a sahib. No, your Bengali is a very different fish, too smart for his own good. Always scheming and plotting… and talking. Why use one word when a paragraph will do? That’s the Bengali way.’

  He was right about the Punjabis. They really would rush headlong to their deaths if ordered to. I’d seen them do it. Still, white or brown, there was something supremely depressing about men willing to sacrifice themselves at the whim of their superiors, and if the Bengalis weren’t minded to do so, that was all right with me. Moreover, as a policeman, I quite liked the idea of a people who preferred talking to fighting.

  Still, if the Colonel was to be believed, the Raj was threatened more by ten Bengalis with a printing press than a dozen armed regiments of Sikhs and Pathans. Not that I underestimated the capacity of the written word to stir up passions. I’d seen enough propaganda in my time to know better. Nevertheless, the fact that even now, back home, British censors were busy banning Fenian books and mutilating newsprint on an industrial scale didn’t sit well with me. But India wasn’t Ireland, and maybe we needed to be tougher here. After all, the note found stuffed in MacAuley’s mouth was a somewhat unsubtle metaphor for the power of words.

  The aroma of fried fish drifting up from the dining room roused me from such thoughts. My watch read twenty past eight. I considered skipping dinner, maybe substituting it with a couple of glasses of whisky. The best part of a bottle of Talisker still lay on the floor beside the bed. But whisky made me maudlin, and there was no guarantee I’d stop after a couple.

  Instead I got up, put on a shirt, steeled myself and went down to dinner. A few other guests were still seated around the long dining table, with the Colonel at the far end holding court. I made my apologies.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Captain Wyndham,’ said Mrs Tebbit as she rose to serve me. ‘We know you’re a busy man. Besides, there’s plenty left for you.’ She liked to make a fuss of me. After all, it wasn’t every guest house that could boast a police officer among its residents. Most of the others had to make do with the usual procession of travelling salesmen and up-country traders. She heaped a portion of grey fish and greyer vegetables onto my plate and I thanked her and contemplated how best to tackle it.

  Opposite sat a flame-haired Irishman called Byrne whom I’d met at dinner the previous night. He was a salesman for a Manchester textile concern and spent most of his time travelling across the country selling his wares to local retailers. The two weeks in Calcutta were apparently the highlight of his year. To my right sat a waspish gentleman called Peters, a solicitor from Patna, in town for a case at the High Court. Both acknowledged my arrival with a nod before resuming their conversation.

  ‘Y’really should visit ’em,’ said Byrne energetically, ‘miles and miles of tea plantations. As far as the eye can see.’ He turned to me. ‘Captain Wyndham, I was just telling yer man Peters here that I’m off to the tea gardens in Assam this Friday. Very different they are to the ones we have up in Darjeeling. See, the ones in Assam are low lyin’, on the banks of the Bra
hmapootra river, not up in the hills.’ He turned back to Peters, who at that moment was preoccupied hiding a piece of fish under some of the vegetables on his plate. ‘And somethin’ else that’ll surprise you.’ He grinned. ‘The time! ’ He made a show of looking at his watch. ‘The time here in Calcutta is now half past eight. That’s the same time in Bombay and Karachi and Delhi. Sure, it’s even the same time in all the towns of Assam. But that’s not the time on the tea plantations. No, sir! D’you know what time it is there?’

  Peters didn’t look like he cared.

  ‘Half past nine!’ crowed Byrne. ‘That’s right. An hour ahead of the rest of the country! Tea Garden Time, they call it.’

  ‘Why is that, Mr Byrne?’ asked Mrs Tebbit, rising to put another piece of fish on Peters’ plate. She considered herself quite the hostess, on a par with the London set, and took it upon herself to stimulate genteel discussion between her paying guests.

  ‘Ah well, y’see, Mrs Tebbit,’ he replied, ‘it’s all about the daylight. As you know yourself, the tea pickers are out in the fields from first light till sundown. But Assam is so far to the east that the sun rises at four o’clock, when it’s still dark in Calcutta and sets at about four thirty in the afternoon. Now that’s no good to the plantation owners. They don’t want their workers getting up in what is officially the middle of the night. So, they set the clocks an hour ahead.’

  Mrs Tebbit turned to me. ‘What do you make of it, Captain?’

  I didn’t really give a damn about Tea Garden Time, but social mores dictate that a truthful reply such as that is considered ill-mannered. Instead, I swallowed and gave what I hoped was a more palatable answer, certainly one more palatable than Mrs Tebbit’s fish.

  ‘I suppose it’s a sensible solution.’

  ’Nonsense!’ snorted the Colonel from the far end of the table. ‘My dear boy, it’s anything but sensible. It’s soft, that’s what it is! In my day, we would think nothing of getting up at three in the morning if we were ordered to. That’s the problem these days. No discipline. The country’s gone to the dogs!’

  The table fell silent. Byrne and Peters were nodding, though whether in agreement or just to shut the old duffer up was open to interpretation. Either way, it seemed a sensible strategy.

  After dinner, the Tebbits retired to their rooms while Byrne and Peters invited me to the parlour for a smoke. I made my excuses. The truth is that since the war, I’m hardly good company at the best of times, let alone when craving a hit. Instead, I went up to my room, locked the door and switched on the ceiling fan. I kicked off my shoes and lay on the bed with my hands behind my head, staring up as the fan made its languorous circuit. Sleep was far from my thoughts. It was an oppressive night and I was on edge. I checked my watch for what felt like the hundredth time. It would still be at least an hour before everyone else in the house had retired to bed.

  Time inched forward. I badly needed a hit. My body and mind cried out for it. Without it my dreams were haunted, and always by the same nightmare. Our trench, under an endless artillery barrage. The screams of wounded men. A shell lands almost on top of me and I’m knocked off my feet. Suddenly I’m on my back on the trench floor, drowning under thick black water. I try to surface, struggling to regain my feet, but it’s no use. The mud has me and I’m sinking deeper, scrabbling around ever more frantically, searching for a handhold, a foothold, anything solid, but there’s nothing, except slick, putrid mud. My strength begins to fail. My lungs about to explode. I feel death close around my throat. I’m going to die, drowned in the devilish, stinking ooze at the bottom of a trench. My vision blurs. Blackness closes in. I stop struggling. I’m resigned to it. No, not resigned but reconciled. Death will be a release. I can hold my breath no longer. I shall open my lungs and end it. Then, at the final moment, powerful hands grip me. I am being pulled upwards. I break the surface, choking but alive. The shells are still falling. I am dumped unceremoniously against the trench wall. I don’t see the faces of my rescuers. I catch my breath. Beside me lies a body, its face covered with soil. Fear grips me. I clamber over to it. Desperately, madly, I wipe the dirt from its face. Sarah stares up at me with cold, dead eyes.

  FIVE

  IT WAS TIME.

  Wrenching myself off the bed, I stumbled over to the sink and washed the sweat from my face. I pulled on a nondescript shirt and trousers, then silently left the room, made my way downstairs and out the front door, locking it carefully behind me. Several rickshaw wallahs were lounging at the corner of the square, engrossed in some heated discussion. They eyed me warily as I walked over, their conversation dying away mid sentence.

  ‘English?’ I asked.

  ‘I speak English, sahib,’ answered the youngest, a wiry sort in a yellowing vest and red checked lunghi.

  I looked him over. Black eyes and skin the colour of the cheroot he held between two tobacco-stained fingers. He raised it to his lips and took a long hard pull. His cheeks hollowed, accentuating an angular, pockmarked face.

  ‘I need to go to Tangra,’ I said.

  The other rickshaw wallahs laughed, exchanging incomprehensible words in some damnable foreign tongue. The youngster shook his head and smiled in the manner the natives all do when about to impart bad news.

  ‘Tangra is far, sahib. Too far for rickshaw.’

  I cursed. That was stupid of me. I should have realised a rickshaw was never going to take me the five miles to Tangra. I obviously wasn’t thinking straight. But I’m not the type to give up easily. Especially where opium’s concerned.

  ‘Take me to a tonga rank, then.’

  He nodded and helped me onto the rickshaw and moments later we were moving, passing briskly through the streets around Marcus Square.

  ‘Why you want to go Tangra now, sahib?’ he asked as he pulled.

  ‘I want to go to Chinatown.’

  There was only one reason for a European to go to Chinatown in the dead of night. But it would be out of place for a native to say so out loud.

  ‘Sahib,’ he said, ‘I can take you to little Chinatown. Is in Tiretta Bazaar, near Coolootolah. Everything you find in Chinatown you will find also in Tiretta Bazaar. Chinese food… Chinese medicine…’

  The man was no fool.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘take me there.’

  I smiled grimly at the thought of what Mrs Tebbit would say if she knew where her prize lodger was off to at this hour. Still, the way I saw it, she was partly responsible. If she hadn’t given me the key to the front door, I’d still have been in bed.

  That was a lie. The cravings were too strong. If she hadn’t given me the key, I’d have found some other means of escape, probably involving windows, bedsheets and drainpipes. One of the practical benefits of attending an English boarding school is that one receives a first-class education in the surreptitious access and egress from almost any premises.

  Anyway, Mrs Tebbit’s hypothetical displeasure was irrelevant. What I was doing wasn’t illegal. Very few things are strictly illegal for an Englishman in India. Visiting an opium den certainly isn’t. Opium’s only really illegal for Burmese workers. Even registered Indians can get hold of it. And as for the Chinese, well we could hardly make it illegal for them, seeing as we’d fought two wars against their emperors for the right to peddle the damn stuff in their country. And peddle it we did. So much so that we managed to make addicts out of a quarter of the male population. If you thought about it, that probably made Queen Victoria the greatest drug peddler in history.

  The city was quiet at this hour, as quiet as Calcutta gets at any rate. Travelling south, the roads became narrower and the houses shabbier. The back streets seemed inhabited mainly by stray dogs and stray sailors, who staggered from shebeen to brothel, eager to part with whatever back pay they had left before shipping out on the next tide.

  We turned into a nondescript alley and stopped outside a decrepit doorway. No windows, no signs, just a door in a wall beside one of those paper lanterns the Chinese love so much. I go
t down and paid the man. No words were spoken. My mind was on other things. He just nodded his thanks and pressed his palms together in pranaam, then walked over to the door, knocked loudly and called out. The door was opened by a squat Chinaman in a greasy shirt and khaki shorts that revealed podgy knees and made him look like a Boy Scout gone to seed.

  He looked me up and down, assessing me in the way a farmer does a lame horse before deciding whether or not to shoot it, then beckoned me inside.

  ‘Quickly quickly,’ he snapped, looking past me into the alley, as though the whole exercise of conversation was distasteful to him. After a week of dealing with obsequious Indians, his attitude was oddly refreshing.

  I followed him through a dimly lit hall and down a narrow stairway into a small corridor, at the far end of which stood a doorway covered by a faded curtain. The smell of opium smoke, sweet and resinous and earthy, hung heavy in the air and sparked something in my brain. It wouldn’t be long now.

  The Chinaman held out a hand. I’d no idea as to the going rate, so I just took out a bunch of dirty notes and handed them over. He counted them and smiled. ‘You wait here,’ he said, before disappearing behind the curtain. The minutes passed and I grew restless. Lifting the veil, I peered inside. Bare walls and stubby little cots of wood and string stood illuminated in the flickering glow of a hurricane lamp. This was no den for the sophisticate. No silken beds, gilded pipes or pretty girls here. This was a place for real addicts: little men with little to live for. It was the right sort of place for me. Not that I considered myself an addict. My usage was purely medicinal. I just needed the O to help me sleep, and for such a purpose, a back-alley shit-hole was better than any upmarket premises, even if it did lack the pretty girls. The problem with a high-class establishment is the quality of the opium. It’s just too good. Pure opium is energising. You get a buzz from it. I didn’t want a buzz. I wanted oblivion, and for that, you need the cheap stuff: the rough, impure, adulterated filth they’d serve in a dive like this, cut with ash and God knows what else. The end result is euphoria followed by anaesthetising, deadening, stupor. Blessed O. After morphine, it’s the next best thing in the world.