Bribery, Corruption Also

by H. R. F. Keating

  'Let me have another hundred.'

  She had come back from where, in among all the frantic bleatings, she had been trying to buy a kid.

  'A hundred? Another— '

  Then he caved in, pulled two notes from the wallet, thrust them at her.

  As if they were two daggers.

  He felt rage. Pure searing rage. Not only was she now planning not to go back permanently to Bombay, but she was spending a huge sum to get, no doubt, one of the very fattest kids, one most acceptable to the destroyer Goddess Kali.

  No, what it is, she is bribing the goddess. Even corrupting her with such a costly sacrifice. It is intolerable. Intolerable.

  But he had made no attempt to stop her, and he knew that it was really right not to have done so. Losing the house, losing Calcutta, losing her bhadrolok life, they meant so much to her that it would have been cruel beyond anything to have deprived her of this one ridiculous, and expensive, chance to change everything round.

  He saw that she had concluded her bargaining. A kid, as fat as any there, was being washed before the sacrifice.

  So what must I do? Wait, I suppose, until Goddess Kali has had her chance to produce a miracle, and only then set down this briefcase, with all our wealth in it, somewhere where ACP Bhowmick can quickly pick it up.

  No sign of the ACP in here. But he has only to wait where he can see the entrance. And then, when we come out, he would be able to see if we still are having the briefcase with us.

  Or, when we are coming out, will he no longer be there? Will he himself somehow be under arrest even? And Protima's prayer to Kali answered?

  Now was the moment. Protima came back with a brahman carrying by its tied legs her kid, a garland of bright red hibiscus flowers round its neck, bleating frantically. She took the briefcase from him.

  'Now we must go to the bolo where the sacrifice will take place,' she said.

  He hefted up the suitcases and followed, feeling the laid-down flower offerings of the pilgrims squashing under his shoeless feet.

  The sacrifice, when it happened, was the very briefest of ceremonies. The kid was placed in a wooden trough. A wooden pin was passed through two holes at its top to keep the fat little bleating creature in place. The big, bare-chested executioner raised his sword, flashed it down. Blood jetted from the headless corpse. It was released from the trough and carried back further into the temple. Ghote, still weighed down by the cases, followed. Protima, with the briefcase full of its banded banknotes, went up to the brahmans there.

  Is she going to give them, as her offering, the whole briefcase? Ghote asked himself in something like horror. If she does and ACP Bhowmick sees us come out of here without it, will he guess what she has done, have us arrested after all? Years in jail? Unending misery? No help from Mother Kali then.

  But Protima did no more than give the priests a handful of crushed banknotes. A tilak in goat's blood was smeared on her forehead. She turned away. He followed her out. In the noise and hurlyburly under the rocket-lined sky they slipped chappals and shoes back on.

  ACP Bhowmick had not disappeared. He stood, just illuminated by the same lamp, looking and looking.

  'We must put the briefcase down now,' Ghote said.

  'Yes.'

  Dry-eyed, Protima simply deposited the white-smeared case against the wall nearby, and, head up, walked off. Ghote, feeling the weight of the two suitcases dragging at his arm muscles, followed. After heaving and pushing through the crowd for some ten or fifteen yards he turned to look back. He had just one glimpse of the tall form of the ACP striding away in the other direction. The briefcase swung from his right hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  High above the Ganges Valley the plane sped smoothly through the night. Ghote and Protima sat, once again, in silence. There was nothing to say. There had been no difficulty over their departure. The tickets ACP Bhowmick had left for them in their white envelope in the heavily furnished bedroom at the Fairlawn had been honoured without so much as a raised eyebrow. The plane had left Dum Dum Airport not any later than almost all flights do.

  But the tension Ghote had felt in all the time since they had walked out of the Kalighat Ttemple and found a taxi had been so strong that at times he had thought he would not be able to take one step more forwards. But take those steps he had, gone through the complexities of boarding he had. And now, sitting beside Protima, he at last began to unwind.

  Abruptly he felt able to speak after all.

  He leant towards her so that what he said would be inaudible under the thrumming of the engines.

  'Corruption is there,' he said.

  It was the culmination of a long train of thought that he had hardly been aware had taken place in his head.

  ‘What you are talking?'

  ‘It is what I have been thinking, thinking, I believe, for a long time. There is corruption. It exists. It exists, I know now, in Calcutta as much as in Bombay. Very well, when a bad case comes in front of us and there is a possibility to do something to stop same, then we must do it. But that will not put an end to corruption. To bribery, corruption also. It is something that is part of life, and we must be ready to admit.'

  Protima sat pondering the words he had poured so suddenly into her jewel-decorated ear.

  Then she spoke.

  ‘Yes. You are right. We must endure same.'

  Once more they lapsed into silence.

  ‘Bribery also?' she asked eventually.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am thinking so. You know, you cannot draw any line between. Yes, some oiling of wheels is sometimes all right. Some speed money also. But too much is bad, yes, not at all a good thing. So one must try always not to do it. Howsoevermuch it is there. Yes.'

  Through the night the plane droned on. On towards distant Bombay.

  Ghote began to wonder whether he ought to say anything about their arrival, about what they would do when they reached home.

  Home. Home where it had always been. In Bombay. A city with its burden of corruption, different perhaps from Calcutta's but in sum no more and no less. Bombay where to ease the difficulties of daily life they each would have, yes, from time to time to pay out some bribe or other. Bombay, where doubtless at this moment huge corrupt deals were being negotiated, every bit as bad as the one M. F. Tuntunwala and his collaborator in the Ministry were contriving in Calcutta. The deal which, though for a few hours it had looked as if he might be able to put a jamming woodblock under the wheels of that juggernaut, he knew really he had never had a hope of halting.

  He sighed.

  And then into his mind there came a question he would like to hear the answer to.

  He turned to his wife once more.

  'Your wish to Ma Kali,' he said, 'was it answered?'

  She smiled.

  'Tell me, what did you think I had wished?'

  Should I tell her? Did she really wish, back then, that ACP Bhowmick might, for no reason, for some reason, be arrested? Or magically swept out of the world?

  'I was thinking you were wishing that somehow we could defeat that man ACP Bhowmick,' he admitted, almost shyly.

  Again she smiled.

  'Well, it was not that. But what I was wishing has come true, so I may tell you what it was.'

  'Yes? Yes? What?'

  'Just this only: that we could go home to Bombay and be as we have always been. That and no more.'