'I will see if Dutt-Dastar Babu can receive you.' he said, and walked creakily off to the inner room.
Why no intercom, Ghote thought once again with an inner fury brought on by his fears about the task that awaited him. What a mean fellow this Dutt-Dastar is. His own room well-furnished, book-lined and polished, this outer office bare and battered.
He cast a contemptuous glance at the rows and rows of time-scratched green filing cabinets all round, filled no doubt with documents dating almost back to British days, useless, crumbling, even ant-eaten.
And then he realized that the clerk Haripada by departing had given him an unexpected opportunity.
One look at the closed door of A. K. Dutt-Dastar's room, and he nipped round to the far side of the ancient table. There he took a good look at the page of typing in the ancient machine in front of him. All right, just some legalistic mumbo-jumbo, nothing to do with Protima's house. But the typeface exactly the same as the one he had contrived his one quick glance at. With right of passage unimpeded. Its old-fashioned letters unmistakable. The same heavy blackness, wet-looking and messy from one of the re-inked ribbons the clerk Hari-pada was made to use.
So, yes, yes, yes. Not the least doubt about it now. The document from which A. K. Dutt-Dastar had read those words, with right of passage unimpeded, had been under typewriting on this very machine. When they should not have been. When they should have been typed by some clerk belonging to whoever A. K. Dutt-Dastar had indicated, without mentioning any name, was the sender of that document. So A. K. Dutt-Dastar was up to some dirty game. Yes. No doubt about it.
But, if he is, he will never let the document, whatever it is, out of his hands. But, to get full proof of what dirty game is being played, I must somehow leave this chamber with that document itself in my hands. But how? How?
The door of A. K. Dutt-Dastar's room was pulled open.
‘Dutt-Dastar Babu may see you now,' the clerk Hari-pada pronounced.
Ghote straightened his shoulders.
This time A. K. Dutt-Dastar, eyes still concealed behind wrap-around glare glasses, rose smiling from his too-big chair, pushing himself up by its leather-padded arms.
‘Mr Ghote,' he said. ‘Am I not to have the pleasure of seeing your charming wife today?'
Who, Ghote said inwardly, was not one hundred per cent charming to you when last we met.
‘She has gone for shopping, to buy saris.'
A. K. Dutt-Dastar wagged his head.
‘Ah, the ladies, the ladies,' he said. ‘Not but that our Calcutta saris are reputed to be the most beautiful in all India.'
Ghote needed nothing more.
‘Mr Dutt-Dastar,' he said, or almost spat out. ‘When we were here last you were reading to us from some document and you were then stating that one of the difficulties standing in the way of my wife occupying the house she has inherited - one of the many difficulties you were putting forward - was an objection from the owner of some nearby property. I am needing more information. May I please have the document in question? We are wishing to study same at length.'
‘My dear fellow,' Mr Dutt-Dastar replied with unexpected quickness. ‘I very nearly suggested yesterday that you took the document away with you. I realized from the close interest you were showing in it that you felt it was important to you. As indeed it is. It is. It will convince you - it will convince even your delightfully determined wife - that the objections to you staying in the house are truly insurmountable. Insurmountable, yes.'
Ghote felt more than a little disconcerted. He had expected battle: he was being offered peace.
‘Very well,' he said. ‘Then if you let me have the document I would no longer take up your time. You are no doubt busy.'
‘Of course, of course. Though perhaps I might take a minute or so to explain the situation more fully. Some things, you may agree, are best dealt with man to man. However delightful the female element. Perhaps if I could demonstrate the advantages of an immediate sale to you, you may be able to convince your— Your charming wife.'
‘Most kind,' Ghote replied, meaning just the opposite. ‘But I do not like to conduct my wife's business for her. She is well able to undertake same herself.'
‘I am sure she is. I am sure. Indeed, I have the evidence of my own eyes. And ears.'
‘Then if I could have the document. . .'
Let him put it in my hands, he thought. Then, and then only, I will begin to think I have been mistaken in the man.
‘At once, at once.'
The domed brass bell vigorously pinged.
The bald-headed, birthmarked peon appeared.
‘Shibu, ask for the Mrs Protima Ghote - Bombay file and bring it immediately.'
‘Jee, sahib.'
He limped out.
Not until the document from that file is in my hands, Ghote swore to himself, will I try even to find explanation for all this.
But it was not, after more time than Ghote thought reasonable, the birthmarked peon who came in. It was the clerk Haripada. And he spoke only one word.
‘Misfiled.'
A. K. Dutt-Dastar sat up sharply in his too-big chair.
‘What do you mean misfiled? he shouted with more immediate anger than Ghote thought justified.
‘Misfiled,' the clerk Haripada replied, either for emphasis or by way of answer.
‘How has it become misfiled?' A. K. Dutt-Dastar raged on. ‘Are you not responsible for the filing system? How many times have I stated this?'
The clerk Haripada visibly gathered himself up for a reply.
'Shibu has done it,' he said. ‘I have to leave my seat for Nature's purpose on some occasions.'
'Yes, yes. Of course. I am hardly the man to insist that you sit there never shifting from 9 a.m. till evening. I was saying that to you only yesterday. Leave your seat, leave your seat. Those were my very words.'
'Yes,' said the clerk Haripada.
'And you mean to tell me that in your absence, your necessary and excusable absence, that wretched Shibu attempted to put that file in its proper place?'
'It is no longer where it should be.'
'And you have looked elsewhere? In the drawer below, the drawer above?'
'There are many cabinets there. It could be anywhere.'
'Yes, yes. True. Certainly, too true. Anywhere. This is a calamity. A calamity.'
He turned now to Ghote.
'My dear sir, I cannot tell you how sorry I am that this has occurred. But occurred it has. We shall, of course, do our utmost to rectify the situation. But you must know that mistakes may happen, even in the best chambers.'
But Ghote knew all too well that no mistake had happened. A. K. Dutt-Dastar's utmost was no more than a form of words. The lawyer had guessed he himself had seen enough of that thickly typed document to have his suspicions. And he had acted cleverly. He could have simply removed the document, which must be too important to destroy, and have locked it away. But then this police detective from Bombay-side might have made a nuisance of himself, insisted on an explanation, demanded still to know what the document was.
And, yes, by God, I would have done.
So A. K. Dutt-Dastar had simply had the whole green-ink labelled Mrs Protima Ghote - Bombay file tucked away in the wrong place. It was an old trick, especially in the Delhi bureaucracy when some corruption matter was in train. Lose the file. If you needed some delay, nothing was better. If you needed to stall an investigation till you had found the right corruptible man to bribe into overlooking whatever was wrong, then there was no better way of managing the business.
But now . . . Now A. K. Dutt-Dastar could promise from one day to the next that no searches had revealed the missing file. And he may well have personally told the peon, Shibu, where to put it. Or he might have put it there himself.
And, yes, something had been a little wrong about the way the upright clerk Haripada had spoken. The way he had simply uttered that one cramped word, Misfiled. All right, he was one Bengali who did not find
it necessary to say everything twenty times over and then add a dozen extra flourishes. But that single, muttered word had surely been altogether too terse. Very sorry, Dutt-Dastar Babu, it seems file in question is temporarily unavailable. That, or something like it, was what he should have said, and it would not have made too many demands on his unBengali-like reticence.
Then there had been A. K. Dutt-Dastar's responses.
Too quick, if you thought about them. He had been too ready to fly into a rage, before the matter had been fully put to him. And those sly words when the clerk Haripada - again acting on orders? - had stiffly said that 'sometimes' he had to leave his seat for Nature's purpose. All that I was saying that to you yesterday. Leave your seat. And laughing in his sleeves at his own cunning. How he had, no doubt, actually uttered those very words when he had given the clerk Haripada orders about the file. Chalak, yes, bare-faced chalak.
But - the thought came to him like the swift fall of night - even if I am now knowing for certain a trick has been played, there is nothing I can do. I cannot go back into that outer office and work through each and every one of those filing cabinets. There must be twenty-thirty of them. Each full to brim with buff-coloured files. Files, files, files. Reaching back, I was thinking only yesterday, perhaps to British days.
And among them that one green-ink file Mrs Protima Ghote - Bombay. Lost. Lost for ever. Or until A. K. Dutt-Dastar chooses to have it brought to light.
Chapter Eight
Protima stood in their room at the Fairlawn, its bed a shimmering spread of new Calcutta saris - But you may not be so rich as you are thinking, Ghote had said to himself in dismay - and glared at her husband as he told her what had happened at A. K. Dutt-Dastar's chamber.
‘The file mislaid? But that is— It is monstrous. Monstrous. There is in that file each and every detail of the will I am benefiting from, and— No. No, it is worse. The file has that document in it, yes? The one that is a clear clue to nefarious dealing? So ... So are you telling it has not been mislaid just only by error?'
‘No,' Ghote said, ‘it was not.'
‘Then you must be thinking what I am beginning to think,' Protima said. ‘Mr Dutt-Dastar is not at all a true, decent Bengali lawyer. He is some sort of utterly corrupt individual.'
Ghote forbore saying that he had had his suspicions of A. K. Dutt-Dastar from almost the moment they had met him. And that he had tried to pass on his doubts to her. It was enough for him that she had admitted, if not quite directly, that it was possible to be a Bengali and an utterly corrupt individual. Something that, ever since she had seen herself living the bhadrolok life, she seemed to believe was impossible.
But fate gave him no reward for his forbearance.
'Then, document or no document, we must expose him. You have definite indication that something is not right. Go with it to the police here. They are your Bengali colleagues. They will take up case.'
He sighed.
'Kindly think,' he said, with slogging depression. ‘What is this indication you are stating I am having? It is one glimpse of a few words. In a document I am not even knowing what exactly it is. And even if some officer there is believing I saw what I was seeing, there is nothing to say definitely what crime has been committed. Or even that a crime has been committed at all till date.'
'Nonsense. That man Dutt-Dastar is totally corrupt. I know it. You even know it. You were saying it was so. You were saying some corruption is taking place over the wetlands project. Yes, the wetlands. It is that.'
'But- '
'No, no. No buts and butting. That is not at all the way to go about it. With doubts and delays. That is what is wrong with this country. Everybody is knowing there is corruption. No one is daring to try to stop same.'
This was Bengali Protima once more, he thought. He felt a burden replaced. High-mindedness, it was fine. Noble. And, yes, if he had to admit it, there were perhaps more high-minded individuals in this city of Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, of Tagore and the saint Ramakrishna, of the mystic Aurobindo, than in any other city of India. Of the world even, admit that also.
And it was fine, too, to back that high-mindedness with fiery zeal. Calcutta did that also.
But... But when the moment came to transfer high-mindedness into something to be done, then the picture was not so fine. Especially if the person who had to do whatever high-mindedness had said should be done was not some blazing-up Bengali but a simple, down-to-earth Bombaywalla.
Especially if it is myself.
‘It is all very well to be saying that,' he broke out. ‘To be insisting and insisting that something should be done to stop this. But what it is we have to stop? We are not knowing. We are not at all knowing.'
‘You are knowing and knowing that there is a big corruption matter to do with the wetlands, the wetlands beyond my house. My house. My house which they are plotting and planning to take from me.'
Her eyes sparked with fury.
‘It is just only to get you to sell,' he replied. ‘To sell quickly now for what A. K. Dutt-Dastar is calling a decent sum before all the development in the wetlands is beginning.'
‘To sell? Or to have taken from me? To have stolen from me? What is there of difference? I will not have the house I have in full legality inherited taken from me, the house I have dreamed all my life that I would one day stay in.'
Should I point out that she has not dreamed that? In all our days in Bombay she was never once mentioning? That she had, until just only ten-twelve days past, no idea she was going to inherit the place?
But there are times to be silent.
She rounded on him.
'No, something must be done. You must do it!'
'But what? What? What in reality? If I went to the nearest chowkey to here, wherever it is, and told some havildar there that there was a case of massive corruption that had to be investigated, what would he do? Put me in the lock-up as one dangerous idiot, I am thinking.'
'But you should convince. Convince and convince.'
'With what? It comes back down to the same thing every time. We are really knowing nothing. Suspicions we have, yes. But it would take a person with the most sharp mind to see that such hints and guesses may amount to evidences. Evidences something is going on behind scenes here in your Calcutta.'
He knew at once that your Calcutta had been a mistake. But his anger at the situation he was being forced into had sent it jetting out.
However, the jibe brought an unexpected response.
'My Calcutta. But, yes, it is a good thing for you, husbandji, that you are in Calcutta and not in Bombay where someone would need convincing with evidence of two-three dead bodies before they were agreeing nefarious activity was taking place. But, no, you are here in Calcutta. You are surrounded by Bengalis, and Bengalis know how to think. You are wanting to know who would pay attention to these hints and guesses? Any senior Bengali police officer.'
'But nevertheless we are not knowing by name one single one.'
'No? Very well, perhaps we are not. But that is not meaning we cannot find out such an officer. We have good Bengali friends to ask.'
'Friends? We have no friends here.'
'Nonsense.'
Damn her, that word again. .
'Yes, nonsense, nonsense. We are having one very good Bengali friend, and you should be knowing it.'
He thought, whirringly rapidly, in response to the challenge. And found no answer.
'Who were we seeing our first morning in the city?' Protima asked scornfully. 'One very good friend of my cousin-uncle who was bequeathing me my house. We bhadrolok families support each other, you know. I could go to Bhattacharya Babu, even though I was meeting for the first time only, and I could ask whatsoever favour I was wanting.'
'So,' he said slowly, 'you could ask him if he was by chance knowing some senior Bengali police officer who would be ready to listen to even the glimmer suspicions I am having?'
'Of course.'
In two minutes they were out in Su
dder Street and had secured a taxi.
They found Mr Bhattacharya, after they had directed their driver some little way past the squattered wreck of Protima's house, up on the wide flat roof of his own house. He was sitting looking out tranquilly over the clutter of tumbledown hutments beyond his compound, half-hidden in the sluggish smoke of cooking fires.
Looking at the wetlands, Ghote thought at once. But, as he stepped further on to the roof, he saw that in fact hardly any of the wetlands were visible at this point, some quarter of a mile from Protima's ruined inheritance. Just beyond the smoke-shrouded hutments a sharp ridge scattered with sprawling krish-nachuda trees hid the distant view. Only by looking well to one side could there be seen, glittering in the sunlight, three small lakes, swarming no doubt with the hilsa, the boal, the khoi fish Calcuttans devoured so eagerly.
Yes, he thought. Protima's house, our house, is clearly the best place for a road to the wetlands in this area. Perhaps the only possible place.
As they approached, Mr Bhattacharya rose from the broad seat where he had been sitting in the attitude Ghote had over the past few days come to think of as inseparably Bengali; right foot resting up on the seat beside him, leg bent almost double at the knee all but touching the chin, the full weight of his body bearing down on his left hip.
‘Forgive me for not descending to welcome you,' he said. ‘The truth is that I am an old man.'
‘Sir, it would have pained us extremely to have made you go all the way down and then up again.' Ghote said, doing his best to match bhadrolok civility.
‘But now you will take something to drink? My cook prepares some excellent lemonade.'
‘Bhattacharya Babu,' Protima answered for them both. ‘Much as we would enjoy, we are here on business, if that is not imposing on your kindness.'
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