Bribery, Corruption Also

by H. R. F. Keating

  They moved on.

  'This is the Royal Gallery.' Protima announced.

  He took a quick look round. Important not to be seen to be seeking any way of escape. In the middle of the big room a small piano, a writing desk and an armchair, embroidered. None of them bulky enough to hide behind from Mr Green-shirt who, he saw, had entered within a few seconds of themselves and was now standing regarding them in front of a huge painting of some white burra sahib with cheering crowds all round in what seemed to be the pink city of Jaipur.

  Protima pulled him across to look more closely at the little domestic scene in the centre of the room.

  'Yes,' she said, reading a notice, 'the very piano great Queen-Empress was playing as a child. Just think of that. And her desk also. And in that chair she must have been seated.'

  'Nowhere to hide here, come on,' he snapped out, irritated by her not seeming fully alert to what they were meant to be doing.

  Into somewhere called the Queen's Hall. Big bronze doors. Slip in behind them before Green Shirt followed? Not enough room. And in any case, here he is.

  He would like to jump on the fellow and knock him senseless to the ground.

  'Oh, look,' Protima exclaimed, apparently still ignoring the actual reason for their visit, 'out there on the terrace that statue must be Warren Hastings. We were almost seeing his ghost when we were at his house, remember. Come and see.'

  Out on the terrace? Has she spotted a chance of making a run for it? But why then was she speaking so loudly? That damn Green Shirt must have heard. Yes, look, already he is going towards the terrace.

  'Why were you saying all that?' he murmured angrily.

  'Because Warren Hastings is one great Calcutta figure.'

  'But— But don't you know what for we are here? Have you forgotten itself?'

  'Oh, no. You are making too much of fuss. We can have some time for looking before we do what we are planning. It is my last chance to see such Calcutta sights.'

  His anger, not all that fierce in any case, melted in a moment away. Yes, Protima had set her whole heart on a Calcutta life, and it had been torn from her grasp. So she was entitled to such last moments as she could snatch.

  'Yes, yes. We will go and pay respects to Mr Warren Hastings. Some other things also.'

  It will all add to the picture of the two of us doing no more than taking a look at what Victoria Memorial has to offer.

  Solemnly they stood for two or three minutes looking at the statue. It made no impression on Ghote, and even Protima, he noticed, did not seem to be gaining any great benefit.

  At last he felt he could suggest they moved on.

  And perhaps after all, if they were to contrive a situation where they could suddenly double back, they could get away via this terrace.

  'Now we are entering what is known by the name of the Prince's Hall,' Protima, the little guide, announced. 'And, look, here again is another statue of a famous Calcutta man of old days. It is Clive. You are remembering I was telling that famous Clive Street was re-named Netaji Subhas Road.'

  He wished she had not mentioned it. The name of Calcutta's independence hero had brought vividly back to his mind, first the framed poster on the wall of The Sentinel's editor's desk and then Soumitra Mukerjee himself with his cultivated resemblance to the great bespectacled Bengali hero. What setbacks he had had in that bare room. Tb be told, when it had seemed that with the crusading newspaper's aid he might expose the huge wetlands corruption scandal, that the investigation was to go no further. And then to find that almost blackmailing Soumitra Mukerjee into revealing who had ordered him to end all inquiries had simply confronted him with M. F. Tuntunwala. M. F. Tuntunwala at whose cold command they were to be expelled from Calcutta like a pair of anti-socials being externed from Bombay.

  But then, swept up by Protima to the statue of Clive - ‘Clive of India. A true world figure from Calcutta' - he found his spirits abruptly restored. The representation of the man, seemingly weighed down by care, put into his mind once more Calcutta as city of corruption. Here was the white sahib who by bribing the arch-traitor, Mir Jafar, had won the Battle of Plassey and secured Calcutta, and its wealth, for the British. And at any moment now they would be quitting the place, and with safe inside the briefcase he was clutching all those bundles of banknotes.

  He glanced behind.

  Yes, Green Shirt must have left that terrace almost as soon as ourselves. There he is, pretending to be peering at those old-time guns but keeping us altogether under his watch.

  They went on into the Durbar Hall. Once more for him to be reminded of the traitor Mir Jafar. Massively present at the far end of the room was a circular block of black stone some six feet across and perhaps eighteen inches high. Drawn almost magnetically to it, they saw the notice at its foot recording that this was the Musnud of the Nawabs of Bengal carved from a single piece of stone on which after the Battle of Plassey Clive had installed Mir Jafar and saluted him in his turn as Nawab.

  ‘Let's go,' Protima jabbed out, suddenly abandoning history-book reminiscences.

  They hurried off.

  It was only when they were going, at the same fast pace they had unconsciously adopted, through yet another gallery of paintings - Sir Elijah Impey, Ghote glimpsed, another corrupt Britisher and Rudyard Kipling, pipe in mouth, reminding him of incorruptible Gopal Deb - that he realized their sudden haste had done for them what no amount of manoeuvring had achieved before. Green Shirt had somehow got left behind.

  ‘Quick,' he said. ‘Run. Run through into there.'

  Protima immediately grasped what had happened. Gathering up her sari - it was one of her new plain-colour, intricately-bordered Calcutta ones, and worn Bengali style - she set off. With one quick look behind to make sure they were still unobserved, he pelted after her, the big shiny briefcase banging and thumping against his thigh.

  Through one more gallery. Sharp turn at the end. Through another. No time now to take in what was in them - glass cases with collections of stamps? Stamps?

  - on they ran. There were few people about and most of those made way for them, perhaps thinking Protima was ill.

  And then, almost missing it, Ghote saw a narrow blank door marked in faded red paint No Exit. No exit, he thought, mind racing. Must mean exit, but not for public use.

  He caught Protima, half a yard ahead, by the elbow.

  ‘Here,' he panted. ‘Through here we would be safe.'

  The door was fastened by a movable bar. He wrenched it up, pushed the door open.

  Daylight. Daylight and safety.

  Then into the rectangle of bright light in front of them there stepped a man. Tall, broad-chested, in uniform. An attendant. Or . . .? Or something else?'

  Beneath his big bushy moustache he was very slightly smiling.

  ‘No way out,' he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A museum attendant? Or had that been a police uniform? Another of ACP Bhowmick's men, glimpsed before he had banged the door shut? It was plain, whichever it was, that their escape had been prevented.

  On the whole, Ghote thought, it is most likely Mr Bhowmick has taken more trouble than I was counting on to make sure we cannot leave Calcutta until this briefcase has been put down somewhere in the Kalighat Temple. If he has set up such a net as we have been caught in here, he is not going to let us get away wheresoever we may go.

  Sadly he trailed with Protima through to an official exit, noting that once more Green Shirt was only a few paces behind.

  Nowhere else to go now but the Fairlawn Hotel.

  Even there they felt, in unspoken agreement, they should stay in their room rather than attempt to sit outside where they would come under the eyes of Green Shirt and another watcher who had established themselves opposite as soon as they had once more entered the gate. They did go down to the dining room when, at eight o'clock precisely, the imperious imperial gong summoned them. But neither of them did much justice to the very English fare.

  All next da
y they felt themselves equally imprisoned, allowed out of their cell as it were only for breakfast porridge and kipper, lunchtime solid curry. At last, with the onset of evening, the time for departure came. Time to go, on ACP Bhowmick's orders, with their luggage in hand first to the Kalighat Temple then, leaving behind one paint-smeared briefcase, on to Dum Dum Airport and liberty. If that truly was what they were going to be allowed.

  As the hotel bearer put their cases into a taxi, under the eyes of Green Shirt, now in fact dayglo Blue Shirt, already in an autoricksha with his fellow watcher speaking into his mobile phone, Ghote realized that Calcutta was already well caught up in celebrations for Kali Puja. The moonless night had come, exactly two weeks after the full-moon of Laxmi Puja under which they had arrived. The atmosphere all round was already electric with joyousness.

  But it was not so in the taxi.

  There, as their driver slowly ploughed through the laughing, dancing, shouting, waving, exuberant crowds, Protima abruptly burst into tears. For an instant Ghote was enraged.

  I have troubles enough, isn't it? What for does she—

  And then he thought. Protima is not one of those women who weep at everything, weep at anything, weep at nothing. Far from it. Tears do not often come to her eyes, let alone pour from them. And now, today, at this moment at the start of our journey away from

  Calcutta, her beloved Calcutta, if ever she has a right to weep, she has it now.

  He put his arm round her shoulders.

  'No,' he said. 'No, do not cry. Yes, it is bad. End of all our hopes. But not end of world itself. Holy Ganga has not yet dried up.'

  And she recovered. Sniffed. Dug inside her sari -and at that moment he realized she was not wearing one of her new Calcutta ones, and nor had she put it on Bengali fashion - found a handkerchief and blew her nose. With vigour.

  From a band of musicians in their bright yet battered uniforms at the entrance of a side street there came a brassy echo to her small nasal trumpeting rising up from cornets, trombones, tubas over the hectic sea of noise all round.

  'Yes. I am sorry. It was just only . . .'

  'Never mind, never mind. We have to go through with this, so let us just only go through with it.'

  'Yes.'

  Outside the swift darkness of night descended. Doubly dark without the moon. Now and again Ghote saw a rocket streaking up into the sky, much as he had done when Protima had kept him out of bed to look on at the Laxmi Puja celebrations. He remembered seeing then in the lane below the outline of the immense garbage heap he had later watched being attacked by animal specimens of what old Mr Bhattacharya had described as the corrupters of his city.

  Well, he thought, at least no more will Protima and myself be among those eating away at this place.

  Whether, when they got back to Bombay they would be in a similar fashion corrupters of that city, was something he felt unable to decide.

  But will we get back? he asked himself in a sudden access of something like fear. Does ACP Bhowmick intend to take the big bribe we have been forced to offer him, and still to use his power to put myself behind the bars? Or - worse, worse, worse - Protima behind bars? It is something he could do. We have committed the crime of offering an illegal inducement, true enough.

  The taxi was forced to a halt by a cluster of revellers escorting a ricksha toweringly loaded with a statue of Goddess Kali on her way to be set up at a pandal, ten feet or more high. In the light of the flares all round, her tall body glinted blackly, her red protruding tongue easy to make out in the middle of her garland of human heads. The body of her husband Siva, in a bright shade of pink, was just visible under her feet as she danced on him where he had lain in her path to halt her too terrible triumph after killing the giant demon oppressing even the gods.

  'Just like the statue we had in the house each and every Kali Puja,' Protima said, in sudden excitement. 'I am remembering so well. Until almost our last year here I was in very much fear of her. Promising and promising I would be good when she was brought inside. But that year my father was taking me first to Kumartuli by the river in North Calcutta, where they are making the idols of all the gods for each and every festival. And when I saw Ma Kali just as the men had made her out of thick grey clay - it is coming from the mouth of the Hooghly, you know, many miles away -then I was able to feel just only joy when, painted, she came to us.'

  Back to her old Calcutta praising self, Ghote registered. Well, if she is feeling that much better, we may get to the end of this day in something of a good state. Sadness for her, yes. But for me? To be going back to Bombay where I am belonging? Not altogether sadness.

  Unless ACP Bhowmick has decided we will not in the end reach Bombay.

  Tall Goddess Kali on her frail ricksha moved away, swaying and wobbling. Slowly the taxi progressed. Ghote began to wonder if they would arrive at the Kalighat Temple in time to leave the briefcase before getting to Dum Dum for the flight. If they were to be allowed to board it.

  He glanced once more out of the taxi's back window. And, yes, there not even separated from them by a single other vehicle was Blue Shirt - that garish colour catching the light - insolently following. Clearly, ACP Bhowmick did not mean them to do anything but go straight to the temple. And, clearly, he meant that to be known.

  Well, nothing else to be expected.

  As they got nearer, the pandals at street comers became more numerous. Rising up twenty or thirty feet, their cloth-covered bamboo structures painted - as often as not with added commercial advertisements -and lit by green, red and yellow tubes of light. In each a Goddess Kali was installed, grim with blood, the destroyer.

  Destroyer, please, of just only the wicked, Ghote found himself thinking, almost praying. And we two, we are not wicked. Surely, surely. Or not very wicked. We have bribed, but we have not corrupted.

  Then, silent beside his silent wife, he began questioning whether there truly was a line dividing those states. A line, hard-drawn, between bribery that kept things going in the world, and corruption, that ate away at the whole fabric? Did it exist, that line, as he had always somehow believed, if without thinking too much about it? Or did bribery slip into corruption, the muddy but holy Ganges water of the Hooghly River merging unnoticeably into the thick foul solid mud of its banks?

  He had not come to any decision when they arrived at the temple.

  In the darkness - even if it was sporadically illuminated by flares, rockets and firecrackers - it was difficult to make out more than the vague outline of the building as they stood beside the taxi, guarding their two large suitcases with the wretched, heavy black briefcase of cash hard-clutched. All that was to be seen was the tall dome, just visible against the sky, and, even less to be made out, a balustrade looking curiously like one of Calcutta's British-style buildings. From somewhere ahead, above the din and music of the crowd, there could be heard the bleating of hundreds of goats ready for sacrifice.

  Then something made him turn to look behind him.

  And there he saw Blue Shirt, not many yards away, ordering his cycle ricksha driver to turn. He set off then, leaving them apparently unwatched.

  But, oh yes, Ghote thought, he has had his orders.

  ACP Bhowmick is not at all wanting any detective in the force to see him going away with the black briefcase I am this moment holding. And that must be meaning . . .

  'Look,' Protima said at that moment. 'There by that lamp-post.'

  He looked where she had indicated. ACP Bhowmick, hovering, waiting for the briefcase to be set down for him.

  He began to glance about for a suitable spot.

  But suddenly Protima plucked him by the sleeve.

  'Give me the briefcase,' she said, 'and you come with the suitcases.'

  'But why? Where to?'

  He felt a dart of bewilderment.

  'This way, this way.'

  Puzzled, he followed her at as quick a pace as he could lugging both their heavy cases. Puffing and panting he pushed after her through the den
ser crowd nearer the temple itself, jabbering, singing bhajans, shouting out Jai, Ma Kali.

  What on earth . . .?

  He caught up with her as she stopped outside the shed-like structure from which the noise of goats' bleating had been emerging more and more loudly. She was slipping the chappals off her feet. Rapidly he tugged off his shoes and left them amid the flotilla of footwear already removed by other pilgrims. Protima turned to him.

  'Give me some money.'

  'But what for? How much? What money?'

  'For buying a goat, of course.'

  'What goat? These are here for sacrifices, isn't it?'

  'Of course. That is why I am wanting. You make a wish, and if it is a goat that has cost enough, Ma Kali is sure to grant same.'

  'But- '

  He had just sense enough not to say that this was nonsense.

  'But what wish are you wanting to make?'

  'Mustn't say. Duffer. Don't you know that?'

  Damn it, now at the last minute she was becoming even more of a hothead Bengali than before. Never in Bombay had she called him a duffer, and not very often had she told him there was something he ought to know and did not.

  But this was her last hour as a Bengali in Calcutta, and he remembered how much two weeks ago coming here had meant to her.

  He pulled out the new wallet he had had to buy.

  She plunged her fingers in and extracted some notes. Many more than he liked.

  He stood, holding the wretched briefcase she had thrust at him, the two big cases between his legs, while Protima hurried away to buy her goat and gain whatever wish it was that had come into her head.

  Is she wishing, he thought, that somehow ACP Bhowmick will be unable to take the money? Can she still be hoping, wishing, praying to Goddess Kali, that somehow she will be able to leave Calcutta with the whole sum the forced sale of the house has brought in?

  Or, worse, can she possibly be hoping, now when it is far, far too late, to get the house back, to stay here in Calcutta?

  At this, a great grey cloud descended. Dust thicker than any floating in the air of Calcutta. Not to go back to Bombay. No longer to be a police officer.