Gun Island

by Amitav Ghosh

‘Ah, so you are a scholar then? You came here only to study?’

  I don’t know what got into me then for I rarely talked about the circumstances of my departure from Calcutta. But Cinta had been so forthcoming herself that almost without knowing it I blurted out the words: ‘No, that wasn’t all.’

  ‘There was something else then?’

  I nodded.

  She turned her black eyes on me and it was as if she were looking right into my soul.

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were you setting out in search of her? Or running away?’

  ‘Neither,’ I said. ‘She died, very suddenly and I had to leave.’ I took a deep breath. ‘It’s a long story.’

  Her eyes narrowed but she did not press me. ‘Where did you grow up then?’

  ‘Calcutta,’ I said. ‘In India.’

  ‘Calcoota?’ she said, in her inimitable way. ‘That is where the Indian National Library is, giusto?’

  I learnt then that at the end of her sabbatical Cinta intended to return to Italy by way of Asia and was planning to spend a week at the Indian National Library. Why? Because her current research project was on the role of Venice in the medieval spice trade.

  It came as news to me that Venice had ever played a part in the spice trade. But Cinta assured me that this was indeed the case: ‘Spices were a big part of the Venetian economy; for centur- ies the city had a Europe-wide monopoly on the spice trade.’ She threw her head back and blew out a coil of smoke. ‘The profits were so great that everyone became envious. That is why the Portuguese and the Spanish set off on those voyages of discovery – they wanted to break the Venetian monopoly on spices.’

  I don’t know whether it was because of what she said, or how she said it, but in any case I was captivated: it seemed wonderfully original to me that someone should want to travel to India to study the history of Venice. And Cinta being who she was I assumed that she would be travelling in great style and that the arrangements for her visit had already been made. Little did I expect that she would ask me – a mere Catalog Assistant! – to suggest a place where she might stay. But so she did, and after giving the matter some thought I said: ‘I suppose you might want to try the Grand Hotel.’

  ‘Is it very grand?’

  ‘It is certainly the grandest hotel in Calcutta,’ I said (which was true at that time).

  She shook her head: ‘Then it’s not for me. I would like a quiet place, modest but clean – the kind of place where serious scholars stay.’

  She blew out a smoke ring and waved it away. ‘You see,’ she said softly, dropping her gaze. ‘I want to be incognito, if you know what I mean. I want to be quiet and to work – and also to see the city. You understand? I don’t want many people – especially the papers – to know that I am there.’

  This was the closest she came, during those two weeks, to mentioning her bereavement and the firestorm of publicity that had followed it.

  ‘Yes of course I understand,’ I said. ‘I know just the place for you – a clean, quiet guest-house, not far from my own flat. I will be there myself this winter and if you like, I would be glad to show you around the city.’

  She gave me one of her heart-stopping smiles. ‘Yes – I would like that … Grazie!’

  * * *

  It was on Cinta’s second day in Calcutta that we went walking in the Maidan. This being the largest open space in the city it often happened in those days that circuses and troupes of performers would pitch their tents there. That day, as I remember, one such tent seemed especially popular: people were streaming towards it from every direction.

  At the entrance to the tent was a large (and to my eyes, hideous) billboard depicting a female figure entwined by serpents. It was inevitable perhaps that the image would catch Cinta’s eye: when she asked me about it I explained that there was a performance going on in the tent, and that it was based on a popular legend about the goddess of snakes.

  I said this flatly and without enthusiasm, hoping that she would let the matter drop. But my explanation only whetted her curiosity.

  ‘Posso?’ she said, gesturing at the tent. ‘Can I take a look?’

  My heart sank. I had no taste for jatra performances, which often go on for hours with absurdly costumed figures screeching in falsetto voices. The worst part, as far as I was concerned, was that these performances tended to reduce classic texts to simple-minded parodies.

  But to explain all this to Cinta would have taken a long time so I allowed myself to be led towards the tent, although not without indulging in a little bit of sarcasm. ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘that this is the India you had expected to see, isn’t it?’

  She turned to me with a puzzled expression. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘It’s exotic, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Especially if you think of India as a land of snake-charmers, as many foreigners do.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘And all these people inside?’ she said, pointing to the crowded tent. ‘Are they foreigners? Do you think this is exotic for them too?’

  I shrugged. ‘They are just simple people, with time to kill.’

  She smiled. ‘Well, I feel like I have a little time to kill as well – so I hope you won’t mind if I go inside for a bit?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘And I hope you won’t mind if I leave you here and go for a little walk? I could come back in, shall we say fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Yes. Perfect.’

  So I left her there and came back a short while later to find her already at the entrance.

  ‘Did you enjoy the show?’

  She nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, very much. I couldn’t understand a word of it of course, but I enjoyed watching the audience. I have never seen an audience so completely spellbound. It was as if they were stregato – bewitched.’

  ‘I’m sure they were,’ I said. ‘People of that sort will believe anything, won’t they?’

  She glanced at me in surprise. ‘You really don’t like this story do you? It is perhaps too vulgar and common for you?’

  This was near enough to the bone to nettle me. ‘I think you’ve misunderstood me,’ I protested. ‘I grew up with this story. In fact it was the subject of my research thesis – I’ve even published an article on one of the epic poems on which this performance is based.’

  It occurred to me suddenly that it would be a coup for me, career-wise, if the great Giacinta Schiavon were to read (and, better still, comment on my article).

  ‘I could show you the article, if you like,’ I said. ‘It’s not too long, just ten pages or so.’

  ‘Why of course,’ she said. ‘Please do. I will read it with pleasure.’

  * * *

  I seized upon this invitation with an eagerness that is a little embarrassing to look back upon now (in my defence it could be said that I felt I had slipped in Cinta’s regard, having come across as a priggish and overly westernized snob and was therefore keen to exonerate myself). The very next morning I went by the guest-house of the Ramakrishna Mission, where she was staying, and dropped off a copy of my article – ‘A Note on the Dating of a Bengali Folk Epic’.

  * * *

  We had arranged to have dinner that evening, at a restaurant that was a twenty-minute walk from the guest-house. Cinta was waiting for me when I went to pick her up and within a few minutes, just as we reached the quiet sidewalks of Southern Avenue, she said: ‘I read your article. Just now, before you came.’

  ‘Oh? What did you think?’

  ‘Bravo! Very interesting. I’m sure you’re right about the potatoes!’

  The hint of mockery in her voice warned me that she had more to say. I waited.

  ‘I find it interesting how you write about this poem. You are like an archaeologist examining a pottery shard. Your language is so clinical, so precise!’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Your words are high praise, so far as I am concerned.’

  She cast a puzzled, sideways glance at me as we passed under a street
light.

  ‘Is that all it is for you then, this poem? A lifeless fragment that is of interest only because it can be carbon-dated?’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ I said. ‘I’m not a literary critic after all.’

  ‘Però … those people at that performance yesterday, they were not critics either. And how they listened! Just to look at them you could tell that for them the story is not dead.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You should have seen how rapt they were!’ she said. ‘And so many of them too! You would never see a crowd like that in Europe today, for such a performance. If someone staged, say, Orlando Furioso they might get an audience of learned critics and professors but that would be all. You would never get people like that – simple people, young and old, men and women. Only for calcio – football – do you see such a crowd. But even that is not the same for you would not see so many women at a football match. No, for those people yesterday that poem is alive! It is about the here and now! It is more real than real life.’

  ‘Well, what can you expect?’ I retorted. ‘Those people are, as you say, simple and uneducated. Wasn’t it Marx who said that peasants are like sacks of potatoes? Is it surprising that their lives are filled with gods and goddesses and demons?’

  She glanced at me again. ‘You really do not care for ordinary people, do you?’

  The imputation of elitism made me bridle. ‘Why you’re quite wrong!’ I said. ‘I consider myself a person of the left. As a student I was a Maoist fellow-traveller. I’ve always stood in solidarity with peasants and workers.’

  ‘Oh yes, certo!’ she said, suppressing a giggle. ‘I knew many Maoists and fellow-travellers in Italy. They had every regard for the bellies and bodies of poor people – but not, I think, for what is in their heads.’

  ‘Not if it goes against reason,’ I said. ‘I pride myself on being a rational, secular, scientifically minded person. I am sorry if this does not conform to stereotypes of Indians – but I am not religious and don’t believe in the supernatural. I will not, on any account, go along with a whole lot of superstitious mumbo-jumbo.’

  She was quiet for a couple of paces. ‘If that is true,’ she said softly, ‘why do you use all these religious words?’

  ‘What religious words?’

  ‘Like “superstitious” and “supernatural”?’ she said, sketching apostrophes in the air with her index fingers. ‘Don’t you know that it was the Catholic Inquisition that put these words into currency? It was the Inquisitor’s job to stamp out “superstition” and replace it with true religion. It was the Inquisitor also who decided what was “natural” and what was “supernatural”. So to say that you don’t believe in the “supernatural” is a contradiction in terms – because it means that you also don’t believe in the “natural”. Neither can exist without the other.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ I said impatiently. ‘That’s just semantics.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. But the whole world is made up of semantics and yours are those of the seventeenth century. Even though you think you are so modern.’

  This stung me in a particularly sensitive spot and I struck back harshly.

  ‘I suppose in your eyes no Indian can be modern or rational? We’re all supposed to believe in goddesses and witches and demons?’

  ‘Madonna!’ She stopped suddenly and flung up her hands in a gesture of disbelief. ‘Why? Do you think that people elsewhere don’t believe in such things? You are so wrong! I can tell you that to this day there are many people in France and Italy for whom witches and spirit-possession are just simple facts of life.’

  ‘Impossible!’

  The word sprung spontaneously from my lips; I could not square what she was saying with my conception of Europe, which I had always regarded as the wellspring of scientific rationality.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘But it is true!’ she insisted. ‘Have you never heard of tarantism, for example?’

  ‘No. What is that?’

  ‘The word comes from tarantola – a kind of venomous spider that lives in southern Italy. Its bite can have strange effects on people. In some parts of southern Italy people believe that spirits can enter you through the bite of a tarantula. The victims have to be exorcized by music, and especially dance – that is where the tarantella comes from.’

  ‘But Cinta,’ I said, ‘the tarantella is just a musical form, isn’t it? A very old one, as I recall, going back to the seventeenth century? Surely things like that died out a long time ago?’

  ‘Actually no!’ said Cinta. ‘Tarantism still exists. Someone I knew published a brilliant study of it not long ago – Ernesto de Martino. Have you heard of him?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The name doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. De Martino is very little known outside Italy even though he was, in my opinion, one of the most im- portant intellectuals of the twentieth century. He was a historian, a folklorist and an ethnographer – and also a communist and disciple of Gramsci. But what he is famous for are his studies of tarantism, which he conducted in the 1960s when such practices were thought to have died off long before. That is what makes his work so interesting: he showed that in some parts of Italy – the very birthplace of Renaissance rationalism! – tarantism was thriving. And unlike all the others who have studied such practices he approached it with an open mind. He did not assume that these poor peasant women – and they were mainly women – were deluded. He did not rule out the possibility that they experienced something that falls outside our usual range of explanations.’

  ‘You mean,’ I said, in disbelief, ‘that he believed that spirits and demons are real? That they can communicate with people through spider bites?’

  ‘No, no!’ said Cinta. ‘His argument was that we cannot start with the label of the “supernatural”, as rationalists invariably do. They assume that unexplained forms of causation cannot in principle exist. Yet, as de Martino shows, there are many well-documented instances of things that cannot be explained by so-called “natural” causes.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Hmm…’ She paused to think. ‘For example, foreknowledge – what they call pre-cognition nowadays. Knowing that something will occur before it does.’

  ‘As with soothsayers and oracles?’ I scoffed. ‘You’re not telling me you seriously believe in that kind of thing?’

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘But then how do you explain what happened with the Aztecs?’

  ‘I’m sorry? You’ve lost me.’

  ‘But have you not heard about the Aztec predictions? Long before the Spanish arrived the Aztecs knew that invaders would be coming across the seas. They knew that they would be carrying “sticks of fire”, and they even knew about the shapes of their helmets. And it was because they knew these things that they were helpless when the invasion actually came about. People think that knowing the future can help you prepare for what is to come – but often it only makes you powerless.’

  At this point I almost burst out laughing. But fortunately we had now reached our destination, a Chinese restaurant on Lansdowne Road. Opening the restaurant’s big red moon-door I said, on what I hoped was a light note: ‘If there’s one thing I have confident foreknowledge of it’s that the food in this res- taurant will be more Indian than Chinese.’

  * * *

  I was, I must admit, a little shaken by this argument, not because Cinta had said anything particularly strange – many people say strange things after all – but because she had tried to defend what she had said. It seemed unseemly, inappropriate, even rude. It’s one thing, after all, to tell a child a fairy tale at bedtime; it’s quite another to tell the same story to an adult, in all seriousness.

  But still, I liked Cinta, and did not want to lose her friendship, so I decided that I would let the subject drop. And evidently Cinta too had come to a similar decision, so the dinner went by pleasantly enough. But our disagreement was neither settled nor forgotten and the strain tha
t it had created lingered in the air as we walked back to the guest-house. It was on an awkward note that I said goodnight but I gave her my phone number anyway and asked her to call if she needed anything.

  However, I didn’t think that Cinta would want to see me soon and was not surprised when the next couple of days passed without any word from her. I knew that she was in town for the rest of the week so I decided that I would let another day or two go by before seeking her out, perhaps at the National Library.

  But instead it was Cinta who sought me out. One evening, just as I was finishing dinner, my phone (the old-fashioned kind, with a dial and finger holes) began to ring. To my surprise it was Cinta: ‘Ciao, caro!’

  Her voice sounded strained. ‘How are you, Cinta?’ I said. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I have had some news. I have to go back to Italy immediately. I am flying out tomorrow.’

  I didn’t want to pry but nor did I want to seem unconcerned. ‘It’s nothing serious I hope?’

  She hesitated and then added, reluctantly: ‘Perhaps you know about my husband and daughter … what happened?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  I could sense that she was struggling with herself, that she wanted to talk, but not over the phone.

  ‘Look, Cinta,’ I said, ‘would you like me to come over?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  She was waiting for me at the entrance to the guest-house. ‘Can we go somewhere?’ she said. ‘For a walk maybe?’

  The weather was not pleasant that evening. As often happens in Calcutta in January, the streets were shrouded in a heavy, noxious-smelling fog.

  ‘A walk may not be a good idea today,’ I said. ‘Maybe we could go back to my apartment instead? It’s not far.’

  ‘Va bene. Let’s go.’

  The usually busy streets were silent and almost deserted. Neither of us said anything until we had reached the house.

  My apartment isn’t large but the living room is comfortable enough. Cinta seated herself on the divan and I poured us both a shot of brandy from a bottle that I had bought at Duty Free.