by Amitav Ghosh
‘Wait!’ cried Fitcher. ‘Listen, I mean’ee no harm…’ – but the fellow was already lost in the greenery.
Glancing into the transplanter, Fitcher spotted the succulent stub of a bluish-grey plant – some kind of cactus, he took it to be – but there was no time for a closer look. Machete in hand, Fitcher went stroathing into the bushes in pursuit of the fleeing gardener.
Soon Fitcher was hacking through densely tangled greenery, with thorns and dashels clawing at his clothes. Although he had long since lost sight of the gardener, he went crashing ahead, until he broke free of the tangled undergrowth and found himself in a field of chest-high grass. On either side were towering talipots, arranged in straight lines, as if to flank an avenue. At the far end, rising out of the disordered foliage, were the remains of a small but well-proportioned cottage: tenacious saplings had taken root on its roof and its walls, tearing apart its tiles and timbers; a couple of shutters had been prised apart by creepers and were slapping against their frames with tired squeaks of their hinges.
Fitcher remembered the house, for it had been pointed out to him on his last visit: it was ‘Mon Plaisir’, built by the great Pierre Poivre himself. As he walked towards the cottage Fitcher’s steps were slowed by a pilgrim’s awe – here had lived the man who had lent his name to an entire genus, Poivrea. Fitcher could not help thinking that this was how an explorer might feel on beholding a ruined temple in the jungle – except that the irony, in this instance, was that the force that was devouring the temple was precisely the aspect of Nature that was enshrined within it.
Suddenly, just as Fitcher was about to step on the cracked flag-stones of the threshold, a figure appeared in the main doorway. It was the young gardener: he was dressed all proper-fashion now, in a jacket and hat, but in his hands he was holding a stout stick.
Fitcher came to a halt. ‘There’s no need to be getting eerself in a spudder now.’ Placing his machete on the ground, he stuck out his hand: ‘I’m Frederick Penrose – they call me Fitcher. I mean’ee no harm.’
‘That is for me to decide sir,’ said the youth, briskly, ignoring his hand. ‘And my jugement must wait until I know what has brought you here.’
His English, Fitcher noted, was perfectly fluent, yet there was something puzzling about it – not just the pallyvouzing idiom but also the intonation, which contained some notes that were strangely reminiscent of the speech of lascar crewmen.
‘I await your answer, sir,’ said the youth, with a hint of asperity.
Fitcher shifted his feet and scratched his beard. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe both of us have come for the same thing.’
The youth frowned, as though he were trying to make sense of this statement, and on looking at him closely, Fitcher realized that he was even younger than he had thought, so young that his cheeks still had their adolescent bloom: indeed he was of an age at which many another fellow would have betrayed some apprehension, if not fear – yet there was no tremor in his voice, nor any other sign of the midgetty-morrows.
‘I do not understand, sir,’ said the gardener, ‘how you can speak of our purposes being the same when you do not know the raisons for my being here?’
‘It’s just that I see’d’ee back there,’ said Fitcher, ‘digging a hole to pitch that cactus.’
At this the gardener narrowed his eyes for a moment, and then a slight smile appeared on his face. ‘I think you are misled, sir,’ he said. ‘It is a long while since I touched a cactus.’
It was Fitcher’s turn to be puzzled now: he could not understand why the lad would go to the trouble of dissimulating over a matter like this. ‘What’re ee getting at, boy?’ he said a little testily. ‘Ee had a cactus in eer hands back there. I see’d’e with m’own eyes – ee can scarcely disknowledge it.’
The youth shrugged in a matter-of-fact way. ‘It is of no great consequence sir: just a simple meprise. Your error is so common that it may be easily forgiven.’
‘What’s that then?’ Fitcher was not used to being patronized in matters botanical and he bridled. ‘D’ee think I’m so green a gardener I wouldn’t know a cactus?’
The youth’s smile widened. ‘Since you are so sure of yourself, Mr Penrose, perhaps you would care to lay with me a wager?’
‘That’s what ee’re after, is it?’
Although not a betting man, Fitcher plunged a hand into his pocket and pulled out a silver dollar. ‘Here I’ll wager ee this – and I hope ee can match it too.’
‘Come then,’ said the lad cheerfully. ‘I will show you the parent plant, and you will see for yourself.’
He gestured to Fitcher to follow as he plunged into a forest of chest-high grass. Fitcher tried to stay close, but the fellow was going like a mail coach and there was no keeping up with him. In the end he came to a stop and called out: ‘Where’ve ee gone tozing off to now?’
‘Here.’
Fitcher headed towards the sound, and found the young gardener kneeling beside a stone bench that was covered with moss. At the foot of the bench was a spiky plant that was being slowly strangled by a blanket of vines: one glance at the bulbous clumps and tiny thorns, and Fitcher knew that he had indeed made an embarrassingly amateurish error.
‘You see, Mr Penrose,’ said the boy, triumphantly: ‘it is not a cactus but a spurge. The very one that prompted Linnaeus to give this race the name Euphorbia. It is King Juba’s spurge – a fine specimen it must once have been, but I fear it has not much longer to live. That is why I am trying to propagate it elsewhere.’
Fitcher sank shamefacedly on to the bench. ‘Ee’ve shown me up for a druler, I won’t deny it.’ He reached into his pocket and took out the coin. ‘E’ve won eer wager fair and square.’
Without another word the youth stretched out his hand. When Fitcher dropped the dollar into it, he snatched it back and stood staring at the piece of eight as if he’d never seen one before.
‘Where’d’ee live then?’ said Fitcher.
‘Why sir,’ said the youth. ‘I live right here – in that house.’
‘In the cottage ee mean? But it’s a ruin, innit?’
‘By no means, sir,’ said the gardener. ‘Come, I will show you.’
Now, once again, Fitcher was in for a wild coursey through the chest-high grass, chasing after the gardener as he raced towards the ruins of ‘Mon Plaisir’. He arrived grunting and cabaggled, to find him waiting by the door.
‘One can see for oneself,’ said the youth, gesturing at the interior with proprietary pride, ‘this house is not quite as much the ruin as the outside suggests.’
Fitcher had only to look through the door to see that this was true – for despite the drifts of dust on the floor and the spangled nets of cobwebbing that stretched from wall to wall, it was clear that the cottage had not succumbed to the onslaught of the elements. But of furniture, as of any other accoutrements of habitation, Fitcher could see no sign.
‘But where d’ee sleep?’
‘There is no lack of space, sir. See.’
The youth pushed open a door and Fitcher found himself looking into a room that had been carefully dusted and rearranged: the floor was clean and the air was scented with the pleasing aroma of boy’s-love – clumps of the shrub hung suspended from the mantel and the window frames. At the centre of the room lay a pile of sheets and curtains, heaped up like after-grass to form a pallet. A chair and a table stood in one corner, both wiped free of dust. On the tabletop lay a leather-bound sheaf of papers, parted at a page that immediately drew Fitcher’s eye – prominently featured on it was a brightly coloured illustration of a plant.
Not to take a closer look would have been impossible for Fitcher: he stepped over and peered closely at the page – the illustration was hand-drawn and it featured a long-leafed plant that was unfamiliar to him. The text beneath was in French and Latin and he could make almost nothing of it.
‘Is this eer doing then?’
‘Oh no! I did only the drawings, sir – nothing else.’
/> ‘And the rest?’
‘It is the work of my… my uncle. He was a botanist and he taught me everything I know. Alas he died before he could finish the manuscrit, so he left it to me.’
Fitcher’s eyebrows began to quiver with curiosity now: the community of botanists was so small as to be almost a family; every member had some acquaintance with the others, either in person, or by name and reputation. ‘Who was he then, this uncle of eers? What was his name?’
‘Lambert, sir. Pierre Lambert.’
A half-throttled cry burst from Fitcher’s throat and he sank into the chair. ‘Well… I… Monzoo Lambert!… did’ee say he was eer uncle? What was your relation to him?’
Once again the gardener began to stammer and stutter. ‘Why, sir… he was the brother of my father… so I… I am his nephew, Paul Lambert. His daughter, Paulette, is my cousin.’
‘Is she now?’
Although Fitcher Penrose was, by his own account, something of a misanthrope, he was by no means unobservant: suddenly things began to fall into place – the guilty surprise with which the ‘boy’ had crossed his arms over his chest, the flower-strewn bedroom. He looked again at the illustration on the open page and made out a signature.
‘Whose was the drawing, did ee say?’
‘Why sir, it is mine.’
Fitcher bent low over the page. ‘But the signature, if I’m not wrong, says not “Paul” but “Paulette”.’
*
Apart from Bahram himself, Vico was the only other person who knew that the Anahita was carrying three thousand chests of opium in her after-hold. Bahram and Vico had gone to great lengths to keep this a secret, fudging the bills of lading, rotating the stowage crews, and disguising some of the crates. To let the facts be widely known would have been imprudent on many counts, making insurance more difficult to obtain and increasing the risks of piracy and pilferage – for this shipment was not merely the most expensive cargo that Bahram had ever shipped; it was possibly the single most valuable cargo that had ever been carried out of the Indian subcontinent.
Bahram was one of the very few merchants who had the connections and reputation to assemble such a shipment, being almost without peer in his experience of the China trade: rare was the Indian merchant who could boast of travelling to Canton more than three or four times – but Bahram had made the journey fifteen times in the course of his career. In the process he had built, almost single-handedly, one of the largest and most consistently profitable trading operations in Bombay: the export division of Mistrie Brothers.
Although this firm was one of Bombay’s most prominent establishments, it had by tradition been quite narrowly specialized, with few interests outside shipbuilding and engineering. The export division was Bahram’s personal creation and it was he who had built this small unit into a worthy rival of the famous shipyard. In doing so he had faced no little resistance from within the firm; if he had persevered, it was largely because of his deep and abiding loyalty to his father-in-law, Seth Rustamjee Pestonjee Mistrie – the patriarch who had accepted him into the family, and given him his start in the world.
As with many others whose fortunes are transformed by advantageous unions, no one set greater store by the reputation of the family he had married into than Bahram himself: in his case, his regard for the Mistries was tinged also with a great deal of gratitude, for it was they who had given him an opportunity to rise above the humble circumstances into which he had been born.
There had been a time once when Bahram’s own family had also been prosperous and well-respected, occupying a place of distinction in their hometown of Navsari, in coastal Gujarat; his grandfather had been a well-known textile dealer, with important court connections in princely capitals like Baroda, Indore and Gwalior. But in his waning years, after a lifetime of prudence, he had made a slew of rash investments, incurring an enormous burden of debt. Being a man of steely integrity he had taken it upon himself to pay off every loan, down to the last tinny, coproon and half-anna; as a result, the family had been reduced to utter penury, with no more than a handful of cowries in their khazana – too few, as the saying went, to string together on an arms-length of thread. Forced to sell off their beautiful old haveli, they had moved into a couple of rooms on the edge of town, and this had proved fatal for the old man as well as his son, Bahram’s father, who was a consumptive and had suffered from lifelong ill health; he did not live to see Bahram’s navjote – his ceremonial induction into the Zoroastrian faith.
Fortunately for the boy and his two sisters, their mother had learnt one lucrative skill in her girlhood: she was an exceptionally good needlewoman, and the shawls she embroidered were much prized and admired. When word of the family’s plight spread through the community, orders came pouring in, and by dint of thrift and hard work, she was able not only to feed her children, but also to provide Bahram with the rudiments of an education. In time her renown spread as far as Bombay, fetching her an important commission: she was asked to supply embroidered wedding shawls for the daughter of one of the foremost Parsi businessmen of the city – none other than Seth Rustamjee Pestonjee Mistrie.
The two families were not unknown to each other, for the Mistrie business had also been founded in Navsari – its origins lay in a small furniture workshop which the Modis, in their heyday, had lavishly patronized and supported. Attached to the workshop was a shed for building boats: although small to begin with, this part of the business had quickly outstripped every other branch. After winning a major contract from the East India Company, the Mistries had moved to Bombay where they had opened a shipyard in the dockside district of Mazagon. On taking charge of the firm, Seth Rustamjee had built energetically upon his inheritance, and under his direction the Mistrie shipyard had become one of the most successful enterprises in the Indian subcontinent. Now, his daughter was to marry a scion of one of the richest merchant families in the land, the Dadiseths of Colaba, and the wedding was to be celebrated on a scale never seen before.
But a few days before the beginning of the festivities, with all the arrangements made and anticipation at its height, fate intervened: one of the Dadiseths’ associates in Aden had presented the prospective bridegroom with a fine Arab stallion, and the boy, who was only fifteen, had insisted on taking it for a ride on the beach. Disoriented after the long journey across the sea, the horse was sorely out of temper: galloping headlong on the sand, the boy was thrown and killed.
For the Mistrie family the boy’s death was a double disaster: not only did they lose the son-in-law of their dreams, they had also to reconcile themselves to the knowledge that the tragedy would make it difficult, if not impossible, for their daughter to make a good marriage: her prospects were sure to be contaminated by the stain of misfortune. When they began to send out feelers once again, their apprehensions were quickly confirmed: the girl’s plight occasioned much sympathy without eliciting any acceptable offers of marriage. When it became clear that no proposals would be forthcoming from within their circle, the Mistries reluctantly took their search beyond the city, to their ancestral town, where they presently found their way to Bahram’s mother’s door.
Although they had fallen on hard times, this branch of the Modis was acknowledged to be of respectable pedigree, and Bahram himself was a sturdy, good-looking lad, more-or-less educated, and of an appropriate age, being almost sixteen years old. Hearing good reports of him, the Seth met with Bahram during a trip to Navsari and was favourably impressed by his eagerness and energy: it was he who decided that the boy would be an acceptable match for his daughter, despite the disadvantages of a rough-edged demeanour and a poverty-stricken upbringing. But the circumstances being what they were, the proposal that was sent to Bahram’s mother was qualified by certain stipulations: since the boy had no money and no immediate prospects for advancement, the couple would have to live in Bombay, in the Mistrie mansion, and the groom would have to enter the family business.
Despite the undreamt-of advantages offered by thi
s match, Bahram’s mother did not press it on him: the hardships of her life had given her many insights into the world, and in discussing the conditions that accompanied the proposal, she said: For a man to live with his in-laws, as a ‘house-husband’ – a gher-jamai – is never an easy thing. You know what people say about sons-in-law: kutra pos, bilara pos per jemeina jeniyane varma khos – rear a dog, rear a cat, but shove the son-in-law and his offspring into the gutter…
Bahram laughed this off as a piece of rustic wisdom that had no application to people as wealthy and sophisticated as the Mistries. He himself was impatient to quit his rustic surroundings, and he knew that an opportunity like this one was unlikely ever to be presented to him again: his mind was made up almost from the first, but for form’s sake, he let a week go by before asking his mother to accept the proposal on his behalf.
And so, with appropriately muted celebrations, the marriage came about, and Bahram and Shireenbai moved into an apartment in the Mistrie mansion on Bombay’s Apollo Street.
Shireenbai was a shy, retiring girl whose spirits had been permanently dimmed by the tragedy that preceded her marriage; her demeanour was more of a widow than a bride, and she seemed always to be shrouded in melancholy, as though she were mourning the husband she should have had. Towards Bahram she was dutiful, if unenthusiastic, and since he had not expected much more, they dealt with each other well enough and had two daughters in quick succession.
If there was little passion in Bahram’s relationship with Shireenbai, there was also little rancour – but such could not be said for his dealings with the rest of her family. The Mistries’ sprawling compound housed a great many people, including Shireenbai’s parents, her three brothers, their wives and their children – and with the notable exception of the patriarch, they seemed mostly to be united in their wariness of the penniless provincial who had come into their midst: it was as though a bumptious and somewhat uncouth poor relative had insinuated himself into their home with an eye to dispossessing them of it.