Gun Island

by Amitav Ghosh

  The thought disquieted me.

  Later, back in my own apartment, I was tidying away my things when my eyes fell on my voice recorder. I reached for it, thinking that I would erase my interview with Nilima, but by accident I pushed the wrong button and the interview began to play from the start. I listened idly until the recording reached the bit where Nilima had recited the following lines:

  Calcutta had neither people nor houses then

  Bengal’s great port was a city-of-the-world.

  Here something caught my interest. I hit the pause button and replayed that bit several times over.

  The lines seemed nonsensical at first, but as I listened to them it struck me that their metre and rhythm were consistent with a particular genre of Bengali folk poetry, one that has been known to yield some valuable historical insights. It struck me as interesting also that the boatman had recited the couplet in answer to Nilima’s question about when the shrine was built. Was he perhaps trying to suggest a date or a period?

  Needless to add, poems of this kind are often intentionally cryptic. Yet, in this instance, the first line was not particularly mystifying: what it probably implied was that the Merchant’s shrine was built at a time when there was no Calcutta – that is to say, before the city’s founding, in 1690.

  But what of the second, more enigmatic line?

  The words ‘Bengal’s great port’ were clearly intended to refer to Calcutta’s predecessor as the most important urban centre in Bengal. And there could be no doubt about the identity of that city: it was Dhaka (now the capital of Bangladesh).

  But the phrase ‘city-of-the-world’, on the other hand, made no sense in this context: I had never heard of the Persian or Urdu phrase, nagar-e-jahan, being used in relation to Dhaka. How had it found its way into this couplet?

  It struck me presently that this line, like the first, might also be a cryptic reference to a date.

  As it happens my own family’s origins lie in the part of the Bengal delta that is now Bangladesh: my parents and grandparents had crossed over to India when the subcontinent was partitioned. But before that they had spent a lot of time in Dhaka – and now, as I tried to recall the Dhaka stories of my older relatives, something flashed through my mind. Flipping open my laptop I started a search.

  An answer appeared within seconds.

  What I learnt was this: Dhaka had served as the capital of Bengal when it was a province of the Mughal Empire. The fourth Mughal monarch was the emperor Jahangir (‘World-Conqueror’) and during his reign, and for some years afterwards, Dhaka had been renamed Jahangir-nagar in his honour.

  Could it be that nagar-e-jahan was a play on words, a cryptic reference to Dhaka in the seventeenth century?

  If this were the case, it would follow that the shrine had been built at some time between 1605, when the emperor Jahangir was enthroned, and 1690, when Calcutta was founded by the British.

  Once this idea had entered my head other details began to fall into place. For example the evident Persian influence in the couplet: the seventeenth century was a period in which Bangla had absorbed many words and phrases from Persian, Arabic and for that matter, Portuguese and Dutch as well.

  A date range of 1605 to 1690 was supported by another detail in Nilima’s story: the fact that the shrine had reminded her of the temples of Bishnupur. For it was precisely in this period that the Bishnupur style of architecture (which married Islamic and Hindu elements to marvellous effect) had flowered across Bengal.

  Equally intriguing was the recurrent theme of the gun (or bundook – a word that had entered Bangla through Persian and Arabic). The Mughals were of course famously a ‘gunpowder empire’. Like their contemporaries, the Turkish Ottomans and the Persian Safavids, their power had rested largely on firearms. Could it be that the Gun Merchant’s shrine was some sort of folksy commemoration of this process?

  It was an interesting possibility but not, I decided, worth the trouble and risk of a trip to the Sundarbans.

  * * *

  With that settled, my mind turned to my other existence, in Brooklyn. It was not entirely an accident then that it occurred to me to wonder whether my American cellphone had run out of charge. While in India I always used a local SIM card and a different device, so my Brooklyn phone had lain unused on a corner of my desk for the last several weeks.

  Switching it on now I saw that the phone was indeed almost out of charge. After rummaging around for a bit I found the charger and plugged it in. Then, flipping through my apps I discovered that absolutely no one, or at least no sentient being (rather than bots) had attempted to call or text me in all the time I had been away.

  I was reflecting on this, with that passing sense of injury that such a discovery is bound to bring, when suddenly, like a dying ember coming to life, the phone’s screen began to glow. An instant later the device let forth a trill, so piercing that the stray cat that had been yowling outside my window took to its heels.

  I was so startled that for a couple of rings I sat frozen, staring at the screen. My astonishment was further compounded when I noticed that the call was from an Italian number and that the caller was an old friend, or rather mentor, Professoressa Giacinta Schiavon. I recalled also that Cinta (as she was known to her friends) had been unwell the year before. I had not heard from her since and had been wondering whether her health had taken a turn for the worse.

  But Cinta’s voice, always resonant, sounded as brisk and cheerful as ever: ‘Caro! Come stai?’

  ‘I’m very well, Cinta,’ I said in surprise. ‘And you? How’s your health?’

  ‘Oh I am fine; tutto a posto.’

  ‘Good. And where are you?’

  ‘In Venice,’ she said. ‘At the airport.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To Heidelberg, for a conference.’ Then she added: ‘I am doing the keynote, you know.’

  The explanation was unnecessary: it went without saying that Cinta would be the star of any conference that was lucky enough to have her. She was a giant in her field, which was the history of Venice; in her youth she had studied with such greats as Fernand Braudel and S. D. Goitein and was fluent in all the major languages of the Mediterranean. Few indeed were the scholars who could match her, either in erudition or name recognition – so it was touching, as well as a little amusing, to see that fame had not dulled the small, and rather absurd, streak of vanity that was among her most endearing traits.

  ‘And you?’ she said. ‘Dove sei?’

  ‘In Calcutta,’ I said. ‘In my bedroom. Do you remember it?’

  ‘Certo, caro!’ Her voice softened. ‘How could I forget? And do you still have that – how do you call it? “The Dutchwoman”?’

  ‘“Dutch wife”.’

  I remembered how she had smiled when I told her that this was the English name for the ‘lap-pillows’ or bolsters that Bengalis love to have in their beds. ‘I had to get rid of that one – the moths got to it. I’m all alone now.’

  ‘But you are well?’

  There was a note of concern in her voice that puzzled me. ‘Yes, I’m fine. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I don’t know, caro – I just had a dream.’

  ‘At the airport?’ I said incredulously.

  ‘Beh! But it’s not so strange … I am in a nice lounge, in a big chair – my flight is delayed because of some flood somewhere. And while I sit here waiting some nice young camerieri are bringing me glasses of prosecco. You understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I could imagine all too well the drama of Cinta’s entry, with every eye in the lounge turning towards this tall, wide-shouldered woman with flashing black eyes and a mass of white hair curling down to her neckline, in a style made famous by the film-stars of her youth. No one who knew Cinta could doubt that every cameriere in the place was clustering around her, racing to fetch glasses of prosecco as she settled into a chair.

  ‘I was sitting here, caro,’ she continued, ‘and I fell into a doze and an image appeared
before my eyes – I don’t know whether it was a dream or a memory. That happens you know, as you grow older – you can’t tell the dreams from the memories.’

  ‘What exactly did you see in your dream?’

  ‘I saw you standing in front of a tent – a big one, like a circus tent. There were many people inside, watching something, a spettacolo – I don’t know what exactly. Do you know what this could be?’

  I scratched my head. ‘Yes, I think I recall something – maybe it happened when you came to Calcutta for the first time. How long ago was that?’

  ‘Twenty years? Twenty-five?’

  ‘Anyway it was a very long time ago,’ I said. ‘We went to the Indian Museum, on Chowringhee, and afterwards you wanted to go for a walk in the Maidan. Do you remember it? It’s a big stretch of green in the centre of the city. You caught sight of a huge tent where there was a jatra going on – a kind of folk opera performance. You wanted to see what was happening so we stopped at the entrance and you looked inside.’

  ‘Ah, sì! I remember.’

  It struck me as very strange that she should recall such a trivial and fleeting moment while sitting in an airport in Venice. ‘We were there for just a few minutes,’ I said. ‘I wonder why you would remember that, of all things, after all these years?’

  ‘È vero,’ she said, sounding more than a little puzzled herself. ‘I don’t know why it seemed important. Anyway, I hope I didn’t wake you?’

  ‘No. Not at all. I’m really happy to hear your voice.’

  ‘Yes, yours too,’ she said hurriedly. I could tell that she was baffled by what had happened and was now eager to get off the phone. ‘Ciao, caro, ciao! We’ll speak again soon. Tanti baci!’

  Unsettled by the sheer randomness of the call I lay down on my bed and tried to think back to that decades-old day when Cinta and I had gone walking in the Maidan. But try as I might I could remember nothing of interest, nothing that might cause that moment to linger in her memory.

  Then I had an idea. Being the avid note-taker and journal-keeper that I am, it struck me that it was not unlikely that I had made an entry that day. If so it would not be hard to find for the journal was close at hand, stacked in the rusty steel trunk that served as a repository for my papers, jottings, diaries and so on.

  Reaching under the bed I pulled the trunk out, amidst a cloud of dust. The hinges squeaked and tiny weevils scattered over the floor as I pushed back the top. Underneath a powdery layer of dust, the contents of the trunk were as I had left them, neatly sorted and labelled.

  And there it was! A slim pocket diary with a russet cover. The page for the day of Cinta’s arrival in Calcutta included the flight details (I had received her at the airport). The entry for the next day read as follows: ‘Tour of Old Calcutta with Cinta and then Indian museum. Thought she might like to see the bright lights of Park St but she wasn’t interested. Wanted to walk in the Maidan. There was a jatra going on, with a big billboard that caught Cinta’s interest; a female figure with snakes wrapped around her body – Manasa Devi.’

  Then it began to come back to me.

  * * *

  I had met Cinta the year before, in the United States. I was then in my early thirties and Cinta was some ten years older. I had recently found a job at the library of the Midwestern university from which I had graduated with a PhD (I had of course applied for all sorts of academic positions, but with no success; it seemed that there was no great demand in America for specialists in early modern Bengali folklore).

  Already then Cinta was a figure of note on many counts. Both glamorous and brilliant she was already a well-regarded historian and had published an authoritative study of the Inquisition in Venice. But it wasn’t because of her book that her name was as well known as it was: she owed her fame (or notoriety) to a personal tragedy that she had endured in the full light of public attention.

  In her mid twenties Cinta had had an affair with the editor of a prominent Italian newspaper, a much older man. He had left his wife for her and they had had a daughter together. Their relationship was by all accounts a very happy one and Cinta had continued writing her first book while raising her daughter, Lucia.

  Cinta’s book was published when her daughter was twelve, and soon afterwards she was invited to a conference in Salzburg. She and her husband had decided to turn the trip into a family vacation and Cinta had gone on ahead, by plane. Her husband, who had a penchant for fast cars, had followed a few days later, with their daughter. But on the way, while crossing the Dolomites, the brakes of his Maserati had failed, sending him and Lucia plummeting down a steep mountainside.

  The circumstances of the accident, and the fact that it involved a famous journalist, would probably have been enough to attract a great deal of attention in Italy. But it was the ensuing mystery, and the suspicion of wrongdoing, that put the story on the front pages of newspapers around the world.

  Earlier that year Cinta’s husband had published a series of exposés on the Mafia. After his death rumours began to circulate that he might have been the target of a planned assassination. The matter eventually reached the Italian parliament and a judge was appointed to conduct an investigation. Inevitably Cinta found herself at the centre of a maelstrom of unwanted publicity and was finally driven to escape the paparazzi by taking a sabbatical in America.

  I, and many of my colleagues in the library, had followed this story as it unfolded in the tabloids and gossip magazines. But where exactly Cinta had taken refuge was not widely known so it came as a great surprise to us when we learnt that she was somewhere nearby, in the Midwest, and had written to the director of our library asking for permission to use our Rare Books Room (which happened to possess an important collection of historical documents, bequeathed by an Italian scholar who had emigrated just before the war).

  Permission was readily granted and on the day that Cinta first showed up at the library I don’t think there was a single member of the staff who didn’t find some reason to drop by the Rare Books Room to catch a glimpse of her as she sat enthroned behind a massive bookstand. And quite a sight she was too, with her elegant yet sombre clothes, and her indefinable air of melancholy.

  In that library the Rare Books and Special Collections Room was regarded in much the same light as mortuaries are in hospitals (the fact that gloves had to be worn in both gave rise to any number of laboured witticisms). Sepulchrally quiet, the room was usually empty except for the occasional scruffy graduate student. So far as the staff was concerned there was no assignment less desirable than that of the person who had to fetch and carry for the users of the room – and since I was new to the library the position of Catalog Assistant for Rare Books and Special Collections naturally came to me.

  So it happened that during Cinta’s two weeks in the library I was the gofer who had to fetch the materials she called up, which I did with a will, if only for the pleasure of hearing her say, in her rich, smoky voice, ‘Grazie mille.’ She had an extraordinary ease of manner and within a day or two she had invented her own name for me, ‘Dino’ (‘Dean in Italian’), but beyond a few occasional words we said hardly anything to each other within the walls of that room. I owed my acquaintance with her, rather, to the fact that I was a smoker then, as was she.

  It was bitterly cold that spring and we smokers had to huddle together in a faux grotto near the library’s main entrance. On one occasion we happened to find ourselves alone there and in an effort to make small talk I asked if she was finding it difficult to deal with the harsh Midwestern weather.

  ‘Oh no!’ she said emphatically, blowing out a cloud of smoke. ‘You know I am half Midwestern myself: my mother is from Lexington.’

  ‘Lexington, Kentucky?’ I said.

  She answered with a nod and a smile. ‘Yes. Alice – my mother – is from Lexington.’

  Cinta explained that Alice was from a Kentucky brewing family, one whose name I knew well, as it happened, because their bourbon was one of my favourites. As a young woman Alice had
yearned to travel in Europe, especially Italy. The outbreak of the Second World War had forced her to defer her dream for a while but she had gone there soon after the war and had fallen in love with Venice.

  This was a time when just to be American was to be a celebrity in Italy; everyone was eager to try out their English. One day, while going down the Grand Canal in a vaporetto, the conducente – a very good-looking young man – had recognized Alice as an American and had said: ‘Can I ask you for some help please? With English? I am trying to learn…’

  ‘Sì,’ she had answered, ‘certo!’ At which he had pulled a book out of his leather shoulder bag and asked her to explain a sentence that he had underlined. An avid reader, Alice was delighted to see that the book was Henry James’s Venetian novella The Aspern Papers. After that she had begun to wait for that particular vaporetto and that particular conducente. Within a few months they were married.

  ‘She has always been a great romantic, my mother,’ said Cinta. ‘You would have to be, wouldn’t you, to give your daughter a name like Giacinta?’

  ‘And your father?’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, he is a Venetian, born and bred. He likes to buy and sell things and is very good at it. They have been very happy together.’

  ‘Do they live in Venice?’

  ‘Yes, always, so I too was born and raised there. I’m a Venetian, one of the last.’ She smiled and blew out a puff of smoke: ‘Basta, enough about me. What about you? What brought you here, to this part of the Midwest?’

  ‘A scholarship,’ I said. ‘For a PhD.’