The Setting Sun

by Bart Moore-Gilbert

  The trouble is particularly difficult to deal with and the police have had little or no success in dealing with it generally. Officers with the very highest reputation, when posted here, seem to get an attack of palsy, for none of them seem to assert themselves to effect arrests, though all will talk for hours about some indefinite action in the future. It is a disheartening business.

  I’m jolted by these last remarks. Given that Hobson was his immediate superior, it’s impossible to escape the inference that Bill was one such ineffectual ‘officer with the very highest reputation’. This lends support to Modak’s more jaundiced observations about his colleague. Perhaps I need to rethink my initial responses to Sentinel. Interestingly, Hobson also seconds aspects of his subordinate’s ambivalence towards the Parallel Government: ‘So far everyone … who has been dealt with [by the movement], in addition to being government servants, are privately all bad characters who have extorted money or goods from the public for their private use under colour of their office.’ However, a later entry by Bill’s old friend Keki Nanavatty provides a rather different perspective. In July 1947, weeks before Independence, he decries the amnesty offered to Parallel Government activists in April 1946: ‘It was a mistake to have pardoned such heinous crimes as cutting off a man’s limbs or murdering him because he helped the Govt.’

  I then browse other entries, to investigate the effect of the political unrest on law and order more widely. From 1938 to 1941, Satara seems to have been as quiet as today. According to ‘Labour Movements and Strikes’, however, 1942 was clearly a turning point. Trouble flared at Cooper Engineering and other industrial works in the region during attempts to form a trade union. ‘Ordinary’ crime also increased exponentially. In April 1943, Yates comments that a Mang gang in Patan taluka (subdivision) has ‘committed over seventy dacoities [armed robberies] in a few months … They thought, and rightly, that the Police were busy with the [unreadable] movement and that their vigilance was reduced.’ Isn’t Patan where Bill picked up the woman torture victim? The following year Hobson observes that ‘the ordinary criminals cash in on political crime to further their object.’ Taken together, the records paint a picture of a district almost out of control at the time Bill arrived and continuing very restive after he left.

  ‘Are you finding everything needful?’ Walawalkar asks, when I gather up my notes.

  ‘Very helpful.’ I show him a couple of entries which refer to the confidential diaries kept by DSPs.

  ‘We’re still looking, sir Professor.’

  I lunch in my hotel room, trying to make sense of what I’ve read. Why did Bill get the IP medal if, as Hobson seems to suggest, his work in Satara was ineffective? And why, indeed, did Hobson? Perhaps Modak was right to be bitter about the awards. Am I ever going to get to the bottom of things? My baffled speculations are interrupted by the receptionist, who calls up to say the vehicle’s arrived. When I go downstairs, instead of Kulkarni, who I’d assumed would be my guide, a tall, languid man gets out. He’s dressed in a blinding white shirt, black slacks and impenetrable sunglasses, which he doesn’t remove before saluting.

  ‘Sub-Inspector Phule, sir. To escort your outing.’

  The road to Shivaji’s fort overlooking Satara is steep and winding, flanked by thick bush. Unless some now hidden path existed, there’s no way anyone could run up to it in half an hour, let alone five, or even fifteen, minutes. It takes us a good quarter of an hour in the groaning 4×4, the driver lurching against Phule as he negotiates the hairpin bends. Another myth about Bill is being debunked, somewhat to my chagrin. We labour to a stop at a massive gatehouse, its narrow aperture easily defended from the bulging towers either side. From here a precipitous footpath leads to the crest of the hill, where thick walls girdle the cliff-edge. They enclose several acres of coarse, parched grass, where there’s nothing except for some ancient stone rainwater tanks, telecommunications masts and a windswept guardian’s cottage, its tiny garden bursting with sweet-bright flowers. To the south, the drop’s even more sheer, the distant dual carriageway I came on a frail thread through the landscape.

  Phule keeps half a pace behind, swinging his binoculars, more like a bodyguard than a guide. I eventually tease out that he’s from Pune, where his wife and two children live. He’s been in the force for eight years and loves it, he insists lugubriously. In his wrap-around shades, he looks like an actor and I half hope he’ll break into a Bollywood routine when we climb the ramparts. But he’s more concerned about snakes than the panorama. It’s eerie here, wind howling with the sorrows of the hosts who died attacking and defending the fort. I wonder how often Bill came up here. Would it have been safe to walk on his own, or did Gaikwad accompany him as Phule does me?

  On the ramparts, he hands me the field glasses. Following his pointing finger, I can just make out another fort, Sajjanghad, on a distant peak. The same style and period as Ajinkya Tara, it’s a place of pilgrimage now, Phule explains, containing a seventeenth-century temple and the mausoleum of Shivaji’s guru, Samarth Ramdas. He describes the hold Ramdas had over Shivaji, and how the saint’s commitment to the independence struggle of his time began one dark night when he bumped his head against something while walking a path through local woods.

  ‘When he looked more closely, he realised it was the dangling feet of a villager hanged for refusing Mughal tax demands,’ Phule concludes gloomily.

  I wonder if Bill heard these stories, and understood how deep-rooted resistance to foreign rule was in this area’s traditions. What did he know about the indigenous religions?

  ‘Did Ramdas have family?’ I ask. I can’t remember whether Hindu priests are allowed to marry.

  Phule nods. ‘Yes, his descendants are still an important clan with extensive land holdings round Chafal.’

  I almost squeal with surprise. The cue’s irresistible. But my heart’s beating so violently it takes me a while to broach the subject. Phule looks surprised.

  ‘Why not a hill station like Mahabeleshwar? Especially now, in the strawberry season. Or Aundh museum? Many curiosities, from all over the world.’

  ‘I’m told the temple of Mahadeo’s very beautiful.’

  Phule frowns. Perhaps he’s been anticipating more exotic outings. But the die is cast. We agree to head for Chafal tomorrow afternoon.

  Farrokh seems in a bad mood when he swings by the hotel soon after Phule drops me. He complains his wife and daughter have stayed on another day in Pune, to do some extra shopping for the little party they’re having. Will I still be around next week-end?

  ‘I may be going to Kolhapur.’ I almost certainly will if I don’t hear from Rajeev soon.

  He looks surprised. ‘Well, come and have a drink now.’

  Farrokh’s tone doesn’t brook any hesitation. This time he takes me to his home. It’s near D.Y.’s, with a watchman at the gate and a posse of guard dogs chained to stakes, which erupt aggressively as we approach. The house is large, hard to tell what period. The interior’s modern Western, with an enormous open-plan kitchen boasting a humming chrome fridge and shiny worktops. Farrokh takes me upstairs into an equally spacious drawing room, cool and cream with plump armchairs and sofas. He puts on a CD, so loud I can barely hear him as he stoops over the drinks cabinet.

  ‘Recognise this?’

  I nod. Beethoven’s Pastoral. Farrokh holds up two bottles, Ballantyne’s and Courvoisier. I point to the whisky. We sip our drinks in silence for a while. But Farrokh’s fidgety and soon gets up to change the music.

  ‘How was Gujur’s interview?’

  ‘Fine. What time’s it on? Couldn’t find the channel in my room.’

  Farrokh shrugs dismissively. ‘Recognise this?’ he asks again.

  This has the feel of an exam. ‘Elvira Madigan.’

  ‘Please!’ he retorts. ‘Mozart’s piano concerto number 21.’

  Unsure of how to soothe him, I ask after his business. Farrokh immediately relaxes and is soon talking volubly about how well it’s going, the new export
markets he’s negotiating.

  ‘Not bad for a company that began in beer barrels, eh?’ he concludes. ‘Guess how much I’m worth?’ Farrokh calculates rapidly on a pad, before waving it triumphantly. ‘At today’s exchange rate, 250 million sterling.’

  I can’t think what to say. Fortunately, my embarrassment’s relieved by a volley of barks. Farrokh gets up and goes to the window.

  ‘Come down and meet them.’

  His wife and daughter are soon in the kitchen, stacking booty on a worktop as a servant struggles behind with the larger bags. Mrs Cooper’s a fine-looking woman who greets me cursorily before excusing herself to go and shower. The daughter lingers a moment. She’s in designer jeans and embroidered shirt, a cream silk scarf loose round her neck. I wonder if Farrokh’s grooming his daughter to take over the business. She answers his questions about drinks for the party before disappearing down the same corridor as her mother. I get the feeling the house is zoned, women here, men upstairs. It sits oddly with Farrokh’s aggressive modernity.

  I’m keen to get off and see if I can catch Gujur’s interview, but Farrokh seems reluctant to relinquish me.

  ‘What did you do today?’

  When I’ve explained, he leans forward. ‘All this VIP nonsense,’ he scowls. ‘Why don’t they concentrate resources on proper police work?’ Perhaps sensing he’s been abrasive, Farrokh suddenly smiles sharkily. ‘Would you like to meet our Rajah? No doubt you’ll be wanting to write a travelogue about the mysterious East when you get home?’

  I’m beginning to dislike my host, but it’s too good an offer to refuse. Aside from anything else, it might give me more insight into the fragile political alliances of Bill’s time. ‘Thanks, Farrokh. But not tomorrow afternoon, please.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I shrug. ‘I’m going to meet some people.’

  ‘I’ll call in the morning to confirm.’

  ‘Not before ten, please,’ I say with a yawn. ‘I need a lie-in. Haven’t been sleeping well.’

  ‘Tired? But you’re on holiday.’

  ‘Sort of,’ I concede.

  ‘I don’t take holidays. Work ten hours a day, even now.’

  Why, when he’s already so rich? Surely there are other things in life. As if reading my thoughts, Farrokh grimaces.

  ‘And I’ll carry on till I drop.’

  While he refreshes our drinks, I ask about Modak. ‘Do you know why his father was sacked?’

  Farrokh looks at me keenly. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just wondered, since he was a colleague of my father’s.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  Instinct tells me he’s concealing something.

  It’s a relief to escape at last. Farrokh seems irritated again when I decline his offer of a lift. Am I letting the side down by walking? But he’s downed a fair quantity of spirits and I find driving in India scary at the best of times. He accompanies me past his ravening hounds to the junction, which is bathed in patchy moonlight. I’m thankful for it, because the street lights are few and far between. I vaguely recognise some constellations. We can’t be far off the latitude of Tanzania here. But I can’t name them. Bill never got to finish teaching me the tropical stars. Despite the deep, rustling shadows of the trees, I feel perfectly safe. Indeed, so far on my trip I haven’t experienced the slightest sense of personal danger. The Mumbai attacks seem a world away. Hard to imagine the atmosphere of fear there must have been while Bill was here. Reaching the main road, I pass an imposing colonial building, lights ablaze at the end of a long drive. The sentry salutes crisply, before confirming it’s the district commissioner’s, the setting in No Place for Crime for a glittering dinner which Kumar and ‘Bill’ attend in honour of the governor of Bombay. I imagine the ‘Woodie’ pulling up in real life and Bill checking his wing collar in the mirror as he’s saluted through.

  Ajinkya Tara fort’s a brooding black mass in the moonlight. Built long before the British arrived, it continues to endure imperturbably. Difficult to understand how a handful of foreigners could have hoped to bind to them the civilisation this monument represents, especially once the people turned against them. Force, though no doubt the simpler option, was inevitably insufficient in the end. At best Bill would only have been sticking his finger in the dyke. Did he know that, or did blind obedience or an iron sense of duty drive him on regardless? Perhaps it was the confidence of youth. Or wilful obstinacy.

  On the way back to camp, the boy’s father is teaching him natural history. The rock hyrax, he says, with that wondering look which always makes his son’s heart melt, is the closest zoological relative of the elephant. The boy laughs. Yes, the hyrax has a long snout, but how can such a tiny rat-like darting thing be connected to the majestic tembo? His father asks why he’s laughing, when it’s scientific fact. Later he explains the difference between the social life of termites and of siafu, the fearsome soldier ants. At school, the pupils egg each other on when they arrive in their marching columns, innumerable miniature legionaries. It takes nerve to grab them behind their bulging heads. Soldier ants are agile and quick, and their pincers dig deep and painfully into flesh. Even when the bodies are pulled off, they don’t release their jaws. The trick’s to offer the hem of your shorts to bite on so you end up with a chain of totem heads clamped to the cloth. He with the most trophies wins; and the bleeding when the ants catch you makes being top head-hunter all the sweeter.

  But the boy finds the description of the termite colonies too far-fetched, and says so. How can a whole scaled-down skyscraper, with millions of inhabitants, revolve around a single queen? His father’s smile tightens.

  ‘You’ll see for yourself,’ he says quietly.

  When they’ve had afternoon tea, he calls some of the men. They’re mystified when he tells them to fetch picks and strip off their shirts.

  ‘Choose one,’ he commands the boy.

  Stretching across the plain, every hundred yards or so, are rock-hard, red steeples, many ten or twelve feet tall, scattered amongst occasional baobabs. The boy loves those colossal trees, their branches, disproportionately flimsy, more like crazy roots; the fruit’s equally bizarre, leathery, distended gourds, like rugby balls swaying in the breeze. Kimwaga has told him that after Creation, the baobabs became too proud of the beautiful foliage they’d been given. In retribution, God pulled them all up and stuck them back upside down. The termite towers are equally intriguing. Every grain of sand’s been ingested by its inhabitants, coated to fuse it to the next one with a mortar durable as concrete.

  The boy feels ashamed at the trouble he’s causing when he sees the game scouts take up position. They’ve had a long day, and have been looking forward to their boiled maize and stew. His father’s taking it too far. But the boy’s fascinated, too. He compromises by pointing to a smaller column, perhaps seven feet high, only ten or twelve round the base. The scouts look at one another disbelievingly. But they set to, singing rhythmically to encourage each other as they take turns with the picks. The iron spikes rise and fall, sometimes skidding off the surface, painfully chipping a way through the obstinate defences. The ground begins to swarm with indignant pale blobs. But they’re no problem. Unlike siafu, termite soldiers are blind and sluggish. The boy’s mesmerised by the muscular effort of the scouts, the bass grunts which accompany the singing, the clang of the downward strikes, the obdurate resistance of the earthworks. A little way in, the colour’s darker red because the ants’ cooling system keeps things a little moister. The interior’s honeycombed, endless passages broken up by wider galleries, some filled with supplies – desiccated wings, a patch of fur, even a tiny bone, so white it’s like a ghost’s vertebra.

  It takes more than an hour to demolish most of one side of the pillar. The shadows of the baobabs are creeping rapidly towards them and the first stars emerge, sparks struck off the blinding afternoon sun. As the scouts tire, the boy’s father strips his own shirt off. He’s hairier than his men and more heavily built. Soon the sweat’s runni
ng down his back, too. The scouts now rest on their pick handles to watch. The earthwork turns chocolate as his father approaches the centre of the hive. Unlike the men, he neither sings nor grunts. Even when it’s getting too dark to see properly, and the fruitbats have begun to zigzag overhead, he continues, breathing heavily, great shoulders labouring to heave the pick skywards. Finally a couple of scouts resume their work. If they don’t join in, everyone’s labour will be wasted. Bwana ndogo, little bwana must find his queen, one mutters, before it gets pitch black.

  As the Milky Way forms in the satin night sky, delicate as dandelion fluff, seemingly close enough to touch, his father sends the men for a hurricane lamp. He says that anyone who wants to eat now can do so. Only Hamisi returns, with the light and filtered water. On safari, it’s carried in crate after crate of old Gordon’s Gin bottles with orange and cream labels. His father drinks off half of one, before hanging the lamp on a stick which he jams in the wrecked battlements of the termite colony. The head game scout stays to offer advice on where to dig next. The mosquitoes, about which the boy’s father’s usually so punctilious, have become persistent. Only when the boy complains softly that his ankles are being bitten, does the digging stop.

  ‘Can’t have you catching malaria,’ he mutters. But he seems grateful for the interruption, his great chest pumping, shoulders slumped as he picks up his shirt and flicks it free of the writhing pus-balls.

  ‘Damn queen,’ he says. ‘Probably took one wriggle further back every time the pick landed. I imagine she’s skedaddled over the other half of the anthill. We should have started from both sides at once. But I wanted you to see it in cross-section.’

  On the way back to the tents, the sky blazes with stars. There are so many, the heavens so deep and at the same time depthless, the boy feels vertigo. And a sudden aching sense of sadness. It’s as if the contents of the tower have been tipped into the vast black bowl, the millions of tiny beings still pulsating with life but now separated forever.