by Satyajit Ray
The fact was that nearly everyone in the house was aware of Sadhan Babu’s suspicious nature and made fun of him behind his back. When he returned in the evening, very often he had to hear remarks like, ‘So tell us about the new suspicions you had today!’
Some people pulled his leg in other ways. Nabendu Chatterjee lived on the ground floor. Sadhan Babu went to his house practically every evening to join the group that gathered there to play cards. Only the other day, Nabendu Babu had said to him as soon as he arrived, ‘Take a look at this piece of paper. Does it tell you anything? Someone tossed it in through the window.’
It was only a page torn out of Nabendu Babu’s daughter’s maths exercise book. Sadhan Babu straightened it out, looked at it carefully and said, ‘This seems to be a digital code of some kind.’
Nabendu Babu said nothing. Sadhan Babu went on, ‘But we must have it decoded. It may be a sort of warning . . .’
Nobody had it decoded, of course. But they had achieved their goal, which was only to see in which direction Sadhan Babu’s suspicions could be steered by just a piece of paper.
Sadhan Babu strongly believed that the entire city of Calcutta was filled with cheats and frauds and liars. No one here could be trusted. The only thing that could keep one going was one’s own ability to question everything.
One day, Sadhan Babu returned from his office to find a large, square parcel lying on his table. His first reaction was to think it had come to him by mistake. Who would send him such a packet?
His belief grew firmer when he discovered the parcel bore no name on it.
‘Who brought it here?’ he asked his servant.
‘Someone came this afternoon and left it with Dhananjay. He said it was for you.’
Dhananjay worked for another tenant on the first floor, Shoroshi Babu.
‘Did he say who had sent it? What does it contain?’ ‘No idea, sir.’
‘Well!’
Sadhan Babu sat down on his bed and stared at the packet. It seemed big enough to hold a large-sized football. But it was impossible to guess who had sent it.
He rose from the bed and picked it up. How heavy it was! At least five kilos.
Sadhan Babu tried to remember the last occasion when he had received a parcel. Ah yes, about three years ago, an aunt of his had sent him some mango cake. She had died six months later. He had no close relatives left. He never received more than a couple of letters a month. So a parcel was a rarity indeed. If only there was a note with it!
But who knows—perhaps the sender had indeed enclosed a note and Dhananjay had lost it. He must speak to Dhananjay.
Sadhan Babu went downstairs himself. Dhananjay was busy pounding spicy masala when Sadhan Babu found him. He left his work and came to meet Sadhan Babu.
‘Er. . . did someone leave a parcel with you today saying it was for me?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Was there a note with it?’
‘Why—no!’
‘Did he say where he was from?’
‘He did mention a name—Madan, I think he said.’ ‘Madan?’
‘Yes, that’s what he said.’
There was no one called Madan among Sadhan Babu’s acquaintances. Heaven knows what the man had actually said. Dhananjay was undoubtedly an idiot.
‘Was there no letter or any other paper with the parcel?’ ‘Yes, there was a receipt. My babu signed it.’
‘You mean Shoroshi Babu?’
‘Yes, sir.’
But Shoroshi Babu could not help either. He had indeed signed the receipt for Sadhan Babu, but did not notice the name of the place the parcel came from.
Sadhan Babu returned to his own room. It had grown quite cool in the evening. Winter was round the corner. And so was Diwali. Crackers and rockets had started to go off in all directions.
Boom! There went a cracker. And, in that instant a cold shiver went down his spine.
A time bomb!
Could there be a time bomb inside that parcel? God—it could go off any minute and end his days on earth!
There was a lot of talk nowadays about time bombs. They appeared to be the favourite weapon of terrorists.
But why should anyone send him a time bomb?
Why, one of his enemies, of course! His success as a businessman had caused great jealousy among his rivals. He had to keep all clients happy, just like the others. Yet, if a client chose to give him a contract, all the others immediately became his enemies. It happened all the time.
‘Pocha?’
His voice sounded hoarse. His throat had become dry. Pocha arrived.
‘Did you call me, sir?’
‘Yes . . . er . . .’
He stopped. Would it be a wise thing to do? He had wanted to ask Pocha to put his ear to the packet to see if it was ticking. Didn’t all time bombs have a device attached that ticked? And didn’t this ticking finally result in a huge explosion?
What if it exploded just as Pocha laid his ear against it? Sadhan Babu could not bear to think any more. But Pocha was still waiting for instructions. In the end, Sadhan Babu had to admit he had called him quite unnecessarily.
The night that followed left an indelible mark on Sadhan Babu’s memory. He had spent sleepless nights before, especially during periods of illness. But never had he sat up all night feeling so utterly petrified.
His courage and common sense returned in the morning when it became clear that the parcel was not going to burst and go up in flames. ‘I must open it this evening,’ thought Sadhan Babu. Even to himself, his suspicions appeared to be crossing the limits of reason.
But something happened in the evening to stop him from unwrapping the parcel.
There are some people who have a passion for reading every word in a newspaper. Sadhan Babu did not fall into this category. He only looked at the headlines every day. This was probably why, that day, he missed the little news item about a murder in north Calcutta. He learnt about it in Nabendu Babu’s house in the evening, when he arrived in the middle of a heated discussion.
The name of the deceased was Shibdas Moulik. He lived in Patuatola Lane. The very mention of the name brought back memories of his past that Sadhan Babu had quite forgotten.
He once knew a Moulik fairly well. Was his first name Shibdas? Yes, it was. Sadhan Babu used to live in the same Patuatola Lane in those days. Moulik was his neighbour. A few people went to his house every evening to play rummy. For some strange reason, everyone called Moulik only by his surname. There were two other men who came regularly. One was Sukhen Dutta and the other was Madhusudan Maiti. The latter turned out to be a dangerous crook. From the beginning Sadhan Babu had felt that Madhusudan cheated frequently at the game. One day he could not help mentioning it. Madhusudan’s reaction at this was terrifying. No one had known until that day that he carried a knife in his pocket at all times. It had come flying out that evening. Sadhan Babu managed to escape unhurt only because Moulik and Sukhen Dutta stepped in just in time.
When his business began to prosper, Sadhan Babu left his little room in Patuatola Lane and moved into this apartment house in Mirzapur Street. He then lost all contact with Moulik and company. His fondness for playing cards remained, as did his habit of questioning and suspecting everything. But, apart from these, Sadhan Babu did indeed turn into a different man. The clothes he wore were now more stylish, he smoked cigarettes (having given up beedis) and often went to auctions to buy things like paintings, flower vases and fancy ashtrays for his house. All this had happened over the last six or seven years.
If the Shibdas Moulik who had just been murdered was the same Moulik that Sadhan Babu had once known, then the murderer was undoubtedly Madhu Maiti.
‘How did the murder take place?’ asked Sadhan Babu. ‘Brutal! Oh, but it was really brutal,’ said Nabendu Chatterjee, ‘there was no way of identifying the body. They found his name from a diary in his pocket.’
‘Why? Why was identification not possible?’
‘They found the body, but not
the head. So how could they identify the person?’
‘What? You mean the head . . .?’
‘Yes, the head . . . kaput!’ Nabendu Babu raised both his hands above his head and then swung them down in a single movement. ‘No one knows where the murderer hid the head,’ he added.
‘Does anyone know who actually committed the murder?’ ‘I believe a few people used to play rummy in Moulik’s house. The police suspect it was one of them.’
As he went up the stairs to his own flat on the third floor, Sadhan Babu began to feel dizzy. He could vividly recall the events of that horrible day, soon after he had accused Madhu Maiti of cheating. The others did manage to stop Maiti from stabbing him, but he would never forget the look in Maiti’s eyes.
‘You have escaped today, Sadhan Majumdar,’ Maiti had threatened, ‘but you don’t know me. One day I will settle scores with you—even if I have to wait for years!’
It was the kind of threat that curdled one’s blood. Sadhan Babu had thought he had put the whole thing behind him after moving out of Patuatola Lane. But had he?
What if that parcel lying in his room had been sent by Madhu? Dhananjay had heard the fellow say ‘Madan’; there was no doubt that Dhananjay was hard of hearing. There was not much difference between ‘Madhu’ and ‘Madan’, was there? Obviously it was either Madhu himself or someone deputed by him who had left the parcel.
And he had the receipt signed simply to make sure that it did reach Sadhan Babu.
That parcel must contain the hacked head of Shibdas Moulik!
The idea came to him suddenly and took a firm hold on his mind even before he stepped into his room. He could see the packet from the doorway. It was resting on his table, next to a flower vase. Its height and size were now a clear indication of its content.
Pocha looked curiously at his master as he saw him hovering near the door. With an enormous effort, Sadhan Babu pulled himself together, came into the room and asked Pocha to make him a cup of tea. ‘Ah . . . did anyone come looking for me today?’ he asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘Hmm.’
Sadhan Babu had had this wild vision of the police searching his house. The thought of what they might do to him if they found the head of the murdered man in his room made him break out into a cold sweat once again.
A little later, after a hot cup of tea, some of his courage seeped back. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘at least it’s not a time bomb!’
But if he had to spend another sleepless night just staring at the parcel he knew he would go mad.
The answer, of course, was a sleeping pill. However, there was no escape from nightmares even if the pill did help him sleep.
In one he saw himself playing rummy with a headless Moulik. In another, the bodyless head of Moulik was saying to him, ‘Get me out of this box, please—I’m getting suffocated!’
In spite of the pill, Sadhan Babu woke as usual at 5.30 in the morning. And the minute he opened his eyes, his mind hit upon a solution to his problem.
If the hacked head had been passed on to him, why should he not try to pass it on elsewhere? The main thing was to get rid of it, wasn’t it?
Sadhan Babu put the parcel into a large shopping bag and set out, even at that early hour. He had to admit the packing had been done very well, for not a drop of blood had oozed out.
It took him twenty-five minutes to reach Kalighat by bus. He walked slowly towards the river and found a relatively quiet spot. And then, taking the parcel out of his bag, he threw it straight into the river.
It fell into the water with a loud splash.
The packet vanished and Sadhan Babu heaved a sigh of relief.
Thirty-five minutes later, he was back home. As he walked in through the front gate, he could hear the wall clock in Shoroshi Babu’s house strike seven.
The sound of its chime suddenly shook Sadhan Babu into a new awareness.
For the last few days, there had been this niggling worry at the back of his mind that he was forgetting something he really ought to remember. Some people did, he knew, turn forgetful as they found themselves on the wrong side of fifty.
Upon being told about this, Nilmani Babu had prescribed a special herb.
But now the whole thing had come back to him and there was not a moment to be lost.
Sadhan Babu left home half an hour earlier than usual. He stopped at the auction house called Modern Exchange in Russell Street. Tulsi Babu, its owner, came forward to greet him, a broad smile on his face. ‘I hope the table clock is working properly?’ he asked.
‘Did you send it?’
‘Of course I did! Why, didn’t it reach you?’
‘Yes, yes, I mean . . . er . . .’
‘Look, you gave me an advance of five hundred rupees and I promised to have it delivered to your house, didn’t I? You’re such an old client of mine. Would I not keep my word?’
‘Oh yes. Oh yes. Of course. I mean to say, certainly . . .’ ‘That clock will keep excellent time—you mark my words. After all, it was made by such a famous French company! You got it for a song, I tell you. Very lucky.’
Tulsi Babu moved forward to welcome another customer. Sadhan Babu came out of the shop slowly. What he had got for a song now nestled below the rippling waves of the river.
No doubt Madhu Maiti had taken the most perfect revenge. No doubt, too, that what Dhananjay had heard as ‘Madan’ had, in fact, been ‘Modern’!
Translated by Gopa Majumdar
First published in Bengali in 1983
Gagan Chowdhury’s Studio
There are some apartments which appear to be quite satisfactory at first and one has to live in them to discover their little inconveniences. Sudheen Sarkar realized this when he moved into a flat in Bhawanipore. This was the only sphere where Lady Luck seemed not to have smiled kindly on him. In everything else she had given him all her support.
Take, for instance, the matter of his promotion. He was now the head of a department in his office. Not many could have made such rapid progress at such an early age. After all, he was only thirty-one. He had already climbed up to the shoulder of the department. The head was Nagendra Kapoor, forty years of age—tall, handsome, efficient. All eyes turned towards him as he entered the office, clad in a light grey safari suit. Who could have imagine that the same man would succumb to a cardiac arrest on a golf course?
That his death would lead to Sudheen’s own promotion was only natural. And it was not just a matter of being lucky. No one could deny that Sudheen deserved it.
Then came the new flat. Sudheen’s parents were keen to have him married. Sudheen knew it would be very difficult to live with someone else in the little pigeon-hole in Park Circus. It being generally a good phase in his life, he decided to start looking for a bigger flat. Life had become impossible in the old flat, anyway. There was a house nearby that was often let out for weddings. The sound of the shehnai on gramophone records played at full blast on loudspeakers was beginning to drive him mad.
The very first flat the house agent told him about was this one in Bhawanipore.
Situated on the first floor, the three large bedrooms, the two bathrooms, the veranda facing the south, the mosaic floors and the grills on the windows—all bore the stamp of careful planning and good taste.
The rent was eight hundred rupees a month. And the landlord seemed a good man. Sudheen did not have to look any further.
It was two weeks since he had moved in. He did not notice it at first, but one night he woke to find a bright light streaming in through his window and hitting his eyes directly. Where was it coming from at this time of night?
Sudheen went out on the veranda. The whole area was dark except for one room in the second floor of the house opposite. That was where the light was coming from, through an open window, past his veranda and straight on to his bed. Even if he changed his position on the bed, it would still shine in his face.
How annoying! How could anyone sleep in a room that wasn’t totally da
rk? At least Sudheen couldn’t. But was this going to trouble him every night?
A week later, Sudheen’s suspicions were confirmed. Every night, the light was switched on around midnight and it stayed on until dawn. Sudheen couldn’t bear the idea of closing his own window. A south- facing window had a special advantage in Calcutta, especially if there was no building in front to block the breeze. That was really another reason that had prompted Sudheen to take this flat. His veranda overlooked the garden of the opposite house. At least in the near future there was no chance of a new construction coming up here. It was really a rambling old mansion, probably once owned by a zamindar, lying now in a state of disrepair. By the look of things, its occupants were few.
But who used that room on the second floor?
Why did its occupant keep the light on all night? Someshwar Nag lived in the flat downstairs. He had moved in four months before Sudheen. A man in his mid-fifties, he was a member of the Bengal Club where he liked to spend most evenings. Sudheen happened to run into him near the gate on a Saturday, and could not resist putting a question to him.
‘Do you know who lives in that house opposite?’
‘Mr Chowdhury. Why? Is anything wrong?’
‘No, it’s just that it doesn’t seem as though too many people live in that house, and yet someone leaves a light on all night in a room on the second floor. Haven’t you noticed it?’
‘No, I can’t say I have.’
‘Does that light not get into your room?’
‘No, that’s not possible. You see, their terrace shields the room from a view of the ground floor. In fact, I didn’t even know there was such a room!’
‘You’re lucky. I don’t get any sleep because of that light.’ ‘Very strange. I’ve been told only a couple of people live in that house. It’s owned by one Gagan Chowdhury. He doesn’t go out much. At least, I have never seen him, but, apparently, he does exist. Perhaps he’s grown quite old. I’ve heard that he used to paint once. Why don’t you go and talk to him? He can at least keep his own window closed. Surely he wouldn’t mind showing a little consideration for his neighbour?’
