No matter. What had now been doubly confirmed was that A. K. Dutt-Dastar was the initiator of the corruption affair, and that he was in communication with the ACP about it, either directly or through some other channel.
So, sitting facing him, Ghote saw no reason not to tell his probing lie straightaway.
‘Sir, I am happy to tell that my wife has now, for certain reasons, decided it would be best to sell the house. Calcutta is no longer so pleasing to her.'
He saw the lawyer's head lift up. Because he had heard something unexpected? Or in a sudden dart of suspicion? He cursed him for still wearing his impenetrable wrap-around glare glasses.
‘So, sir,' he went cautiously on, ‘if you would be so good as to let me have the name of the purchaser you have in mind . . .'
‘Ah, there, my dear Mr Ghote, I must disappoint you.'
‘But, Mr Dutt-Dastar, how can my wife sell her house if she is not at all knowing who is to buy?'
‘Perfectly simple. I will conduct the whole transaction.'
How to get round this wall?
‘But— But, yes, Mr Dutt-Dastar, I do not think it right, when you are representing my wife, that you should also represent the buyer she would be selling to.'
The lawyer slowly removed his concealing band of dark glass.
Anything now to be seen from his eyes?
Inscrutable. Looking straight ahead into nothingness. As blank as the inflexible gaze of the clerk Haripada pounding his ancient typewriter outside.
‘Very well, Mr Ghote. Then let me find your wife another lawyer. I can recommend three or four excellent men. Off the top of my head.'
No, must not let him get away with that.
‘Mr Dutt-Dastar, I have no doubt that you must have many acquaintances in legal profession. But somehow . . .'
'You are not doubting my integrity?'
The doubtful lawyer sat up in his big chair, the very picture of affrontedness.
And then in an instant Ghote saw his way ahead.
'Dutt-Dastar Babu, I have only the highest respect for you. Everything you have done for my wife has been carried out in the most efficient manner. We have complete trust in you.'
Now the eyes, no longer protected by that strip of black glass, did give away something. It was only for a moment. But to Ghote sitting opposite, looking meek as he could but unrelentingly observing, it was clear enough. An expression of malicious glee. It said, as clearly as if A. K. Dutt-Dastar had mockingly laughed aloud: I have fooled this Bombay-side fellow through and through.
He felt just a little put out, despite his having gone to such lengths to make the lawyer believe him a fool. That he should be seen as someone who could believe, despite that attack under the Great Banyan, that he was still dealing with a reputable man: it hurt.
Quickly, however, he took advantage of the situation he had gone to such pains to create.
'But if you are passing us to some other lawyer, then that individual must be telling us who will be buying the house. So, sir, would it not be altogether better if it was you who represented my wife, and if you then passed on this buyer you are having to one of your trusted legal friends?'
And he saw that he had caught his man on the hop.
If only because those black glare glasses were hastily resumed.
‘Well, Mr Ghote . . . Well, I do see certain objections to that course.'
‘But, Mr Dutt-Dastar, you cannot represent both parties.'
‘No, no. That is correct. Of course.'
Another pause for thought behind the protection of his black shield.
‘Yes, Mr Ghote, you are right. It would be simplest if I did continue to represent you, and another lawyer represented the buyer.'
‘In that case, sir,' he jumped in, ‘there can surely be no objection to telling me now his name since he will not be a client of yours?'
‘Yes. Yes. Well, I am certainly ready to do that.'
Now? Now? Am I now going to hear that name?
He fixed his gaze on the black glasses in front of him.
‘Yes, Mr Ghote, there is no reason at all not to give you that gentleman's name. He is a person you are hardly likely to know, after all.'
Know or not know, am I really now going to be given that name?
‘So, sir?'
‘It is a certain Mr Gopal Deb.'
Gopal Deb, he thought, typical Bengali name. Curse it. There may well be dozens of Gopal Debs in Calcutta. And, yes, I was even catching Dutt-Dastar saying more or less to himself that I would be hardly likely to know him. So have I been so much of clever? Have I in fact learnt any more than I knew before? When all I am knowing is that the house is to be bought by one among all the many, many Gopal Debs in Calcutta, among perhaps hundreds in Bengal? And is my Gopal Deb, whoever he maybe, actually the Eventual Assignee?
He thought.
And thought he had hit on one way perhaps to advance a little.
‘This Mr Gopal Deb,' he said, ‘can my wife be assured he has enough of funds to buy the house? She is expecting to get an altogether decent sum. If we are to retire, as you were yourself recommending, to a fine bungalow outside Bombay in the cool heights of Mahab-leshwar, we would require a considerable amount.'
‘Oh, I don't think you need concern yourself over that. Mr Gopal Deb is a retired senior ICS officer. No family. Only himself to please. Looking for a business opportunity. And, as you must know, the Civil Service not only provides good salaries, but— Well, shall we say opportunities as well?'
And A. K. Dutt-Dastar favoured him with a smile that was more of a leer.
Money from above once more?
But he must not trust much longer to this picture of a simple Bombaywalla he had made out of himself. Surely now, with the additional information A. K. Dutt-Dastar had let slip, it would not be too difficult for Khokon Roy at The Sentinel to trace a Gopal Deb who was also a retired Civil Service officer.
Khokon Roy, face alight with pleasure when Ghote triumphantly told him what he had learnt, had simply said: 'Senior ex-ICS man, easy enough to find. There are lists of such fellows. So wait to see his name and address on our front page tomorrow.'
But when at the Fairlawn he greeted Protima, back from Rash Behari Avenue, his feeling of triumph at once evaporated.
'Yes,' Protima said, eyes alight with her own triumph, 'I was finding our old house. Outside is no longer pink but a nice yellow. A family by the name of Chatteijee is there, good bhadrolok stock. Mrs Chatteijee was showing me every nook and comer. And so many memories were coming back. I even saw the old table we had left, and remembered sitting at it, with my father bribing me each evening with the promise of a biscuit if I would drink all my milk. Oh, I cannot wait to settle in Calcutta once again.'
He felt a tumble of misery. Not at having to decide whether bribing a little girl to drink her milk was setting her on a bad course, but because he saw Protima so was locked in her hope of becoming a full Bengali again. When The Sentinel broike the story and this Gopal Deb, ICS retired, bank account full no doubt from years of money from above, was prevented from buying her house she would be able to enter into full possession.
Then I myself would do what? Take a walk in the morning like Mr Bhattacharya? Take another in the afternoon? Improve my Bengali? Go in the evenings to all these culture-pulture events Calcutta is so proud of? Or sit and fall into just only a doze?
'You know,' he said, the thought of Mr Bhattacharya reminding him of the promise he had made him, 'one thing we must do is to tell your uncle's good friend what was the result of the advices he was giving. He has a right to know even that ACP Bhowmick is not the man he was believing.'
They went to see Mr Bhattacharya early next morning, starting out even before The Sentinel with its promised denunciation of the unmasked Gopal Deb was on the streets. For a moment or two Ghote had wondered whether to wait till he could see it, till he could experience the first thrill of the ever more rapid hunt. But in what might be a newborn upspringing in himself
of bhadrolok civility, he felt that, as he had remembered his promise to tell the kindly old man what had happened, it was his duty to do so without any delay.
They found him sitting on his roof. Seen from the back, he had his full weight resting on his left hip in that typical Bengali way, with his right knee raised high and the folds of his pure white dhoti cascading down from it. He was looking out into the distance.
And singing.
Well, hadn't Protima said everyone in Calcutta could sing?
She put a hand now on Ghote's sleeve as they were about to emerge fully on to the roof and with her other hand motioned the servant who had led them up not to stay. They stood then listening.
Listening, to Ghote's blossoming pleasure, to the old man's gentle but beautifully expressive voice.
‘Tagore song,' Protima whispered after a minute. ‘One I am well knowing.'
He stayed beside her, unwilling by even the slightest sound to bring the song, whose Bengali words he barely grasped, to an end.
The fluting voice rose into the clear blue sky above.
He caught a phrase or two. The night the storm blew open my doors . . . Little did I know you would come in . ..
He stood there caught up, ravished away. He hardly dared even to breathe.
In the smallest of whispers Protima translated a word or two here and there.
'I reached to the heavens not knowing why . . . Restless I lay dreaming. .. The storm was the flag of your triumph!'
Soon he forgot everything in the trance of the solitary floating music of that pure quiet voice until something momentarily tickled at the back of his mind. Yes, the Tagore poem Protima had quoted about the clerk Haripada, The Flute. This was like just such tears-bringing lonely flute music. He forgot altogether why they had come out here. He forgot about his own triumph in getting hold of that name Gopal Deb. Now all that busyness seemed blankly insignificant. A scratch upon the surface. He forgot even his doubts and fears about coming to this alien city.
Then at last the old man's clear voice faded into silence.
Still they waited where they were.
Eventually Protima whispered, ‘I think in the words of that Rabindrageet he must have been remembering his own wife. Yes, I am sure of it.'
‘Yes,' he said.
There seemed to be no more to say.
Then, seeing the old man was not going to repeat the song, Ghote gave a small cough and led Protima on to the wide expanse of the roof.
‘Mrs Ghote,' Mr Bhattacharya exclaimed as he saw them, grasping his silver-topped stick and pushing himself to his feet. ‘A most pleasant surprise. And Mr Ghote. Or ought I to call you Inspector? Ought I all along to have been calling you Inspector? Is that a title you cling to? Or are you anxious to throw it off and live the life I do? A life, I may say, of idleness. What do I do, after all? No more than keep the world turning by writing letters to the newspapers.'
He dropped back on to his broad bench and patted the sprawled heap beside him, The Statesman, The Telegraph, Amrita Bazaar Patrika. But not The Sentinel, Ghote saw, coming slowly back to where he had been before he had heard the old bhadrolok sing.
‘And when I say the world,' Mr Bhattacharya added with a chuckle. ‘I mean, of course, Calcutta. Where else? But I am failing in my duty. You must tell me at once how your battle with corruption has gone. Did Assistant Commissioner Bhowmick feel there were steps that he could take?'
‘Yes, sir,' Ghote could not prevent himself saying. ‘I am sorry to tell he was very much finding steps. He was having me assaulted. In the Botanical Gardens. Under the Great Banyan itself. So as to rob me of— '
He broke off. Had he got to confess now to Bhattacharya Babu that he had bribed A. K. Dutt-Dastar's peon to give him the ‘mislaid' file?
Yes, he had to. He had gone too far.
‘Sir, to rob me of a document which I had given one heavy bribe to A. K. Dutt-Dastar's peon in order to obtain. A document making it finally clear there is a plan to buy my wife's house, even against her will, and then to drive through it a road to the big new colony they are proposing to build over there.'
He flung out an arm towards the distant glitter of the eutrophic lakes.
Mr Bhattacharya, picking up his stick, leant forward with his full weight on it.
‘My good friend,' he said, 'I too must make a confession. When we first met I saw you as a newcomer to our city, and I am afraid I allowed myself to be led away in praising it as a place above and beyond every other city in India. Almost, so keen was my desire to welcome you, I portrayed it, did I not, as beyond any city in the world for integrity, beauty, civilized life. But I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Let me tell you now the truth as I see it.'
He was so earnest, looked so sad as he spoke, that Ghote would have liked to halt this flow of remorse. To say, Bhattacharya Babu, I understand. Please do not apologize. No need to utter one word more. But he knew, too, that he must not prevent the old bhadrolok from saying what plainly he so urgently wanted to say.
He pressed his lips hard together.
'Yes, the truth. The bitter truth. Calcutta, my dear Mr Ghote, is no different from every big city in the world. No different? Yes, perhaps it is different in that more than any other city in India it is the victim of corruption. But you must understand what I mean by corruption. It is not perhaps what is ordinarily thought of under that heading. It is something deeper, and more to be feared. When you first told me about this business I went, as perhaps I told you, to the library at the Bengal Club in an effort to clarify my ideas, an effort which, I rather believe, the subsequent plethora of differing views I was offered by my adda friends somewhat nullified.'
A cough. And a continuation.
'However, in my preliminary researches, if that is not too much dignifying the process, I chanced to look up in the Oxford Dictionary, that well of English undefiled, the definition of corrupt. And this, to the best of my recollection, is what I found: Changed from the naturally sound condition, especially by decomposition or putrefaction, infected or defiled by that which causes decay. The word comes, I saw, from the Latin corrumpere, to break into pieces and also, significantly I believe, to bribe. Now, I do not need to point out to you, I am sure, how aptly that description of decay and putrefaction fits our poor Calcutta.'
Ghote acknowledged this, thinking of the huge garbage heap he had watched over from his hotel window. But he could not help wondering, too, whether Mr Bhattacharya was ever going to get back to what had so disturbed him at the outset.
'So you see,' the old bhadrolok went on, 'when I speak of Calcutta as the victim of corruption I do not mean only the sort of corruption which your arrival amongst us, with your charming wife, has unexpectedly revealed. Oh, that is bad enough. Bad enough. But Calcutta, as I see her, is attacked in her every aspect by corruption. We are used to thinking that the corrupters are the rich wishing to get yet richer. And so they are, let me not baulk from saying that. But there are other corrupters. Even the very poor, even the poorest. Because, my dear Mr Ghote, think what it is that the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, the millions even, who have come pouring into my city over the past twenty years have done. They have battened on her. Yes, that is the word. Battened. They have eaten away at her flesh. Corrupted it. With their demands. Their just demands, oh, yes. But demands none the less. For food, for water, for shelter.'
A demonstrative gesture to where Protima's house stood.
‘Yes, you have seen that corrupting at work. There. There in the house you have inherited, my dear Mrs Ghote. You have seen how those refugees have eaten away at it. Have stripped it. Have corrupted its very structure. And what has happened to your house has happened ten times over to others. The City of Palaces. That is what they once called Calcutta. And look at those palaces today. Some ground right down to dust. Some still surviving in an almost ruined state. A few still inhabitable and inhabited. But all corroded and corrupted. Allowed to rot in the rains of each monsoon, unrepaired, unpainted, unke
mpt.'
‘But, sir, no.' The protest broke from Ghote, however much he had resolved to let Mr Bhattacharya have his say. ‘Sir, you were before painting one fine picture of Calcutta for me, and I must tell you that I have found it is true. Oh, yes, I am fully a Bombayman, and I will admit that not everything in Calcutta is what I like. But, sir, I have seen in these last days what a fine city it is. Yes, even when under that Great Banyan I was set on and robbed I had just only seen those magnificent Botanical Gardens, I had just only sailed along the Hooghly and seen, despite the dead dogs that were floating by, the splendour of its wide sweeps, the still fine remains of the buildings on its banks. And I have seen the way you Bengalis jump at life. The joy you are showing. Sir, Calcutta has not just only been called City of Palaces, it has been called City of Joy also. When I was first coming I was thinking that was a cruel joke when there is so much of death and destruction, of poverty and degradation to be seen in the streets wheresoever you are going. But soon I was coming to see also that there is very much of life here. Of joy. So, please, sir, do not think you have deceived me with your praises.'
‘No, no, no. You are kind, my dear fellow. But I insist on telling you the truth. Yes, we in Calcutta make light of what is happening to our city. It is all we can do perhaps so as to keep our sanity. But nevertheless it is true: Calcutta is a victim city. Corrupted. Corrupted by its rich who bribe and connive to get richer at her expense. Corrupted from its very earliest days of the British, living to the top of their bent, drunken and lecherous. Can it be something in our air? Even the always present imminence of death from the unhealthiness of the terrain? Corrupted, too, by all her old inhabitants, however lowly, who do not put back one tenth of what they take from her, who bribe and pillage in their smaller way with the best of the corrupt businessmen, the corrupt civil servants, the corrupt ministers. And corrupted even, as I have said, by the very poorest refugees whom we have welcomed and allowed to scrape and eat away at our heritage until, as you must have seen, the dust of their depredation hangs over us all in a dreadful, never dispersing pall and the filthy remains that even they cast away lie stinking in garbage heaps everywhere, garbage heaps our Corporation is too corrupt from the top to the bottom ever to get rid of. Ever to allow us to breathe.'
Bribery, Corruption Also Page 13