Bribery, Corruption Also

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Not at all, not at all.'He gave them a roguish smile.

  ‘What is it? Have you come, now that you have seen your house is uninhabitable, to buy me out of mine, lock, stock and barrel?'

  ‘No, sir,' Ghote answered, deciding to cut across all further bhadrolok laughing civilities. ‘I am sorry to have to tell you that, no sooner have we arrived in your beautiful city— '

  Beautiful city. Damnation. I am immediately falling into bhadrolok compliments myself. Must be something in the air.

  He tried again.

  ‘Sir, I am believing we have stumbled on one grave corruption scandal concerned with my wife's house.'

  There. Said. And with Bombay-style directness.

  ‘Corruption?'

  The old man's softly drooping face showed immediate concern.

  For a moment Ghote wished they had not come. Why should he plague a man at the serene ending of his days with such sordid and sharp business? But he had embarked on it. With Bombay-style directness. No going back.

  So he began an account of everything that had made him suspect the corruption. First, the lie A. K. Dutt-Dastar had told about old Chattopadhyay Babu's willingness to sell the house.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,' Mr Bhattacharya interrupted, ‘my old friend never had the least intention of selling, though now I come to think of it from time to time he did mention he had received offers. No doubt Dutt-Dastar's work, though I took it for no more than sick-bed ramblings. Amitji had told me so often how much he looked forward to going back to his own home.'

  Ghote went on then to A. K. Dutt-Dastar's attempts to persuade Protima her house was uninhabitable, and the way he had kept the document he had been reading from concealed and the piece of luck that had brought to light those words with right of passage unimpeded. Finally he recounted their visit to Writers' Building and what they had learnt there from the insufferable P. V. Bagchi.

  'Yes,' Mr Bhattacharya said sadly when he had finished, 'I had not met Dutt-Dastar until he arrived outside your house, but I had heard of him as Chattopadhyay Babu's lawyer. And of course, in Calcutta, Mr Ghote, everybody knows everybody. Which is to say rather that anyone belonging to one of some few hundred bhadrolok families, as we call them, has some acquaintance with everyone else in that quite extensive circle. The thousands and thousands of others in the city, Bengalis of the so-called chotolok families, the influential Marwari community, who incidentally run most of the commerce of the city, the Muslims, the thousands of Biharis who do most of the dirty jobs the city relies upon, the Parsis, the Jains, the Gujratis, some Maharashtrians from your part of the world, Mr Ghote, the Jews, the Armenians, the Chinese, the Sikhs... I could go on for ever. One knows they are there. One appreciates how they in their different ways make Calcutta what it is. But, and it is perhaps sad that this is so, we bhadrolok people tend to feel that Calcutta is ours and we are Calcutta.'

  'And Mr Dutt-Dastar?' Ghote cautiously put in, half-resenting the spate of Bengali locquaciousness, half-respecting it.

  ‘Oh, forgive me. Carried away. Carried away. A bhadrolok failing, I am afraid. No, about Dutt-Dastar. I have, as I was explaining, heard of him, or heard something of him, even though we had never met. A bad lot. I think it is hardly unfair to say that of him. Yes, a bad lot. Somehow the family fell into penurious circumstances. Both families, I should say. His branch of the Dutts, and his branch of the Dastars. We none of us are much good, we Bengalis, at making money. And indeed it is often all we can do to hold on to what we have inherited. You know the tale of the Nawab at the time of the arrival of the East India Company soldiers?'

  ‘No.' Ghote said, trying to see how he could possibly get the conversation back to practical matters.

  ‘Ah, you should. It tells one a good deal about us. You see there was this chap, a Nawab, immensely rich, big house, bigger far than this, servants by the score, and he knew the British were coming together with their native allies. People on the other side. So he knew he had to flee. But all his servants had run off, and . . . And there was no one to tie his shoelaces.'

  Ghote produced a smile.

  ‘Yes, yes,' Protima echoed. ‘My father also was telling that story.'

  ‘Well,' Mr Bhattacharya went on, ‘the Nawab somehow managed to secure his shoes and save his life, though I suppose it would make a better story had the poor unlaced fellow perished.'

  ‘But about Mr Dutt-Dastar,' Ghote slipped in, feeling a quiver of pride at the cleverness of what he was about to say. 'Mr Dutt-Dastar has his shoelaces always well tied, isn't it?'

  The old bhadrolok chuckled delightedly.

  ‘Oh, my good chap, most neatly put. I can see, despite your Maharashtrian name, you are fast becoming a good Bengali. And, yes, Dutt-Dastar's laces are double-knotted, you may say. The fellow left Calcutta as quite a young man, and established himself in Delhi. A permit-broker, if the gossip is true. Nasty occupation. In any case he somehow acquired a certain amount of money and returned to our city - he had a law degree, of course, what educated Bengali does not - and bought this old chamber somewhere in North Calcutta. So I am not entirely surprised to hear he has his fingers where he should not. Calcutta maybe above such sordid practices in principle, but there are always exceptions.'

  ‘So, sir, what must I do?'

  ‘Yes, my dear Ghote, what are you to do? The evidence you have that some wrongdoing has taken place, or is in train, is only of the scantiest. You can hardly go to the customary authorities.'

  ‘Then, sir, I must let it lie?'

  He hoped the old bhadrolok would say yes. Then all that could be done would be to take whatever they were offered for the house, leave Calcutta and let whatever illegalities were taking place simply happen. To go back to Bombay, to go back a good deal richer than he had ever thought they would be. To go back to duty on the very day his leave ended. To do then what good he could do.

  But he knew this was not to be. He had been tentacle-gripped by the business and it would not let him go. And nor would Protima.

  Before she could voice the opposition he knew she would utter, he stepped in. Before even Mr Bhattacharya could answer that question he had been unable not to ask him.

  'But, of course, sir, knowing what I know, suspecting what I am suspecting, I must do my level best to put one stop to whatever is going on.'

  'Yes, Mr Ghote, I expected you to say that. But as to what is going on, well, I think my advice to you at this moment is: wait and see.'

  He must then have seen the expression on impatient Protima's face.

  'Ah, Mrs Ghote, do not be in too much of a hurry to equate me with the shoeless Nawab. I propose to do what I can to assist you. But I must make some inquiries first. Some inquiries of a legal nature - I, too, Mr Ghote, am qualified as a barrister though I have never practised - and then also some inquiries, shall we say, of a social nature. So I suggest that the day after tomorrow - I shall need that much time - if you would care to lunch with me at the Bengal Club I may have something to tell you.'

  Chapter Nine

  Ghote was hardly pleased at the delay Mr Bhattacharya had imposed on his efforts to get to the bottom of the business that was, at the very least, preventing Protima coming into full possession of her house. He felt frustrated, too, at being caught up in an investigation he was unable to pursue as he would have done in Bombay. There, given orders by the Additional Commissioner in charge of Crime Branch, he would have worked if necessary day and night. Now he had to sit and wait till they met Mr Bhattacharya for lunch at the Bengal Club.

  Not the way to carry out any investigation. A leisurely Bengali lunch. And at a club. However, here in Calcutta, not an inspector of police but an ordinary citizen, all he could do was to wait. Or, as it turned out, to do worse. To sightsee.

  Protima had insisted.

  ‘You are going to stay here in Calcutta. You should know what the city has to offer. All its riches.'

  Could he say they might not be staying? No. That would be telling her he believed she would
never get her house, that she should give in to A. K. Dutt-Dastar's insistence and agree to sell it. And that would mean submitting to the fact that they had been defeated by corruption.

  And this he would not submit to.

  ‘We should go to the Victoria Memorial,' Protima went on. ‘It is not enough just only to have seen it from the Maidan. Or there are the Botanic Gardens. This is a good time of year for them. Not too hot. No one should live in Calcutta who has not seen the Great Banyan, largest in the world.'

  He did want to see it. He had a lingering mild regret that he had not been able to do so on his only hurried, on-duty visit to Calcutta once before. But somehow he felt admitting that to Protima would seal for her his willingness to make the city his home.

  And like an inflexible growth at the back of his mind was the thought that he still did not want to be part of this too exuberant city of joy.

  ‘Too far to go to the Gardens now, and we would need more of time for Victoria Memorial,' Protima said. ‘So full as it is of glories of Calcutta's past. But there is St John's Church.'

  ‘A Christian church, why should I want to go there?'

  ‘Oh, I was not meaning you should see it as a place of worship. If you were ever wanting that, I would take you to Kalighat Temple.'

  ‘No,' he exclaimed. ‘You know that— '

  ‘Yes, yes, I am well understanding this husband of mine. I would have some truly hard work to get you inside Kalighat Tfemple. No, I am suggesting St John's Church for what it has to tell of the days when the city was founded by the famous East India Company.'

  ‘All right,' he said quickly.

  I have put up too many objections already. No need to be irritating her more. Let her show off this city she feels suddenly she has always belonged to. Let her give out one more history lesson, even if it is the British. Any time-pass will do. Until Mr Bhattacharya tells me what I am needing next to know.

  So an hour later he found himself on the steps leading up to a Christian church. Dutifully he read a plaque, Built in 1783 on Land Presented by Maharajah Nabo Kishen Bahadur.

  ‘Maharajah Nabo Kishen,' Protima said, 'was the man who entertained Clive of India after the Battle of Plassey to a rich, rich celebration of Durga Puja. By claiming and stating Clive's victory was one and the same with Goddess Durga's victory over the demon Mahisasura he was founding the tradition of celebrating that puja which is going on still even in these times.'

  The little historian.

  And there was more.

  'This building, which is almost precise copy of one church in London by the name of St Martin's in some fields, was built by one Lieutenant Agg, Bengal Engineers. You see, even in the far-off days Bengal was foremost in building.'

  'Yes,' Ghote said, tiredly.

  He was beginning to suspect that, whenever his back was turned, his wife was going through some guidebook she had got hold of. How else, when she had left Calcutta before she was ten years of age, could she know so much about the city?

  They entered the building.

  Quiet, yes. Gloomy also. Rows of dark wooden caneseated chairs with arms. At the back some huge painting of Europeans in the past. In large colourful robes eating some meal.

  ‘By the famed artist Zoffany,' Protima said. ‘Under the title “The Last Supper".'

  Yes. Guidebook. Definitely.

  ‘You have brought me here just only to see that?'

  ‘No, no. Come this way. Come. We can go into the Council Room, very historical. It was where Warren Hastings used to sit. You know, the Englishman who came after Clive as Governor.'

  Ghote did know, though Clive and Hastings were not much more than history lesson names to him. But he was not going to confess the extent of his ignorance to his wife. He had already had all the lessons he wanted from her.

  He followed her up a short flight of polished stairs and into the Council Room. A room surprisingly small, with in the middle an eight-sided table covered with a green baize cloth. In a comer, with a faded notice on it, there was the big chair the great Warren Hastings had sat in.

  And he got another history lesson after all, though a mercifully short one.

  ‘Yes, look at that chair,' Protima said. ‘In it there sat the man who was ruling from here all of Bengal. A name famous in history. He was ... He was . . '

  Guidebook facts not so well recalled as they might be?

  ‘Yes, when he was going back to England, there he was impeached.'

  ‘Impeach? What is impeach?'

  He guessed that she would be unsure. But he felt he had a right to make her wriggle a little. A right earned by all the Calcutta-this and Calcutta-that he had suffered since their arrival.

  'Impeach? It is some kind of trial. They were accusing Hastings of amassing great wealth by illegal means. I think after six years he was acquitted.'

  So, he thought, even then the high-and-mighty were obtaining money by corrupt method. And in the end not paying any penalty.

  'Yes, yes, I remember now. Hastings was dying in retirement in UK, in some poverty and busy studying our Bengali culture.'

  All right, perhaps not as corrupt as he might have been. But touched by corruption. Yes.

  'I think I have seen all I am wanting,' he said, his mind flooded once again with thoughts of the dubious affair he had just touched with the tips of his fingers.

  Will I ever grasp more? he asked himself. Will in the end I have to concede that I cannot pull down even one piece of what I know is there?

  He had hoped that Protima would give way to his plea of having seen all he had wanted. But he ought to have known better.

  'No,' she said. 'There is more to see about Mr Warren Hastings. His house is still here just as it was in those old days, somewhere in Alipore. They tell that on nights when the moon is full you may hear his ghost. On the full-moon night we were coming here to Calcutta, Laxmi Poomima, we might have heard his coach with its four horses halting under the portico while he was going inside to search in a frantic manner for some papers he had lost. Yes, this afternoon itself we must go also.'

  He sighed.

  Lost papers in history days. But what about that paper of today, lost somewhere in A. K. Dutt-Dastar's battered old green filing cabinets? Lost on purpose. Never to be found?

  'And outside in this churchyard there is more,' Protima said.

  More. More guidebook pages she must have gone through.

  He allowed himself to be led out. Nothing else for it.

  Solemnly they inspected the tomb of the man said to have founded Calcutta more than three hundred years before, Job Chamock - Jobus Chamock, the inscription said.

  'Jobus,' the little historian chipped in, 'was one very, very fine man. When he was seeing a widow just only about to throw herself in suttee on late husband's pyre he was rescuing her and the same night marrying. For twenty years they were living a happy life till she was dying, and then and thereafter Jobus was sacrificing one cockerel each year on her death day.'

  Oh, but we also have been happily married twenty years, Ghote thought in sudden panic. Will Protima soon come to her very end? Well, yes, if she was wanting I would kill one cockerel per annum also.

  'And here,' the still well alive guidebook reader went relentlessly on, 'is the memorial to the English men and women suffocated to death in what was known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. Not as many dead as it is always stating, and also this famous Black Hole was just only a guard room where some prisoners had been put for the night. You cannot be believing everything you may read, you know.'

  ‘Yes, very true,' he agreed, hoping that falling in with her might bring to a quick end this chant of praise even to the city of the Black Hole.

  It did not. After Protima had had her Bengali afternoon sleep she insisted on going to look at Hastings House, even if by daylight there would be no ghostly coach and horses to see. What he did see, however - the well-preserved white columns of the portico, the well-ordered grounds - reminded him all too sharply of the greened-
over, plaster-fallen pillars in front of his wife's eaten-away house and the mysterious threat to it that he had touched with the tips of his fingers.

  But at last it was over. History book, or guidebook, closed for the day.

  And tomorrow, Ghote thought, at the Bengal Club will Mr Bhattacharya have something to say that will get my fingers nearer grasping the slippery truth somewhere hidden?

  Mr Bhattacharya did have something to say. Eventually. A club servant whisked them from the entrance just behind the wide stretch of Chowringhee, through tall rooms, past a long bar in deeply glowing dark wood with clusters of comfortable armchairs facing it and on into the green-and-beige decorated dining room. There the aged bhadrolok was waiting for them, wearing not his customary beautifully hanging dhoti but a lightweight suit with, at his neck, a tie. Ghote admitted hastily to himself that Protima had been right in insisting he, too, wore a tie, his only one. On the table at which Mr Bhattacharya stood the thick starched white cloth was arrayed with heavy silver cutlery and smoothly polished tankards.

  Will I have to drink so much of beer? Ghote panicked.

  But he ought to have counted on Mr Bhattacharya's bhadrolok understanding and courtesy.

  'Mrs Ghote, can I order you something to drink? Most of the ladies here go for Coca-Cola nowadays, since we are permitted to make it in India. Will that suit you?'

  Protima said that it would, and so Ghote, most occasional of drinkers, was able to follow suit.

  And Mr Bhattacharya was yet more understanding. Once a turbaned and cummerbunded waiter had decorously served them with soup - it was a procedure that took not a little time - he leant confidentially forward.

  'Now,' he began, I know you will be anxious to hear if I am able to bring you the help I was offering. I am sorry indeed that I had to make you wait as long as I did. But I wanted first to refresh my memory of the law affecting what you were calling right of passage, and I wanted, too, to discuss the matter with a few chosen friends. Discussion you know, Mr Ghote, is our Bengali vice. An adda, as we call it, may take place wherever any two-three, six-ten of us happen to congregate, at a tea stall, in this club, in our crowded coffee houses, anywhere. And it was to an adda that I wished to put what might be the moral implications of investigating a corruption affair when you cannot be sure that it even exists. Is it right, I had asked myself, to stir up mud when there may be nothing to be found underneath? Would that cause more harm than it would do good?'