Sea of Poppies

by Amitav Ghosh

  ‘Oh?’ said Neel: he noticed, abstractedly, that the Commissioner of Police was wearing his sword; although he had seen Major Hall in the Rajbari many times, he could not recall that he had ever come armed before. ‘And what is the nature of your errand, Major Hall?’

  ‘It is my painful duty to inform you,’ the Major said formally, ‘that I come bearing a warrant for your arrest.’

  ‘Arrest?’ The word was too outlandish to make immediate sense. ‘You are here to arrest me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I know what for?’

  ‘For the crime of forgery, sir.’

  Neel stared at him in incomprehension. ‘Forgery? By Jove, sir, I must confess I do not find this the most amusing of jests. What am I said to have forged?’

  Reaching into his pocket, the Major laid a piece of paper on an inlaid marble table. Neel did not have to look very closely to know what it was: it was one of the many dozen hundees he had signed over the last year. He smiled: ‘This is no forgery, Major. I myself can vouch that it is not a counterfeit.’

  The Major’s finger descended to indicate a line where the name ‘Benjamin Burnham’ had been inscribed with a flourish. ‘Do you deny, sir,’ the Major said, ‘that it was you who made this mark?’

  ‘Not for a moment, Major,’ Neel said evenly. ‘But the matter is easily explained: there exists an agreement between Mr Burnham’s firm and the Raskhali zemindary. This is a fact universally known . . .’

  So far as Neel knew, the Raskhali hundees had always carried Mr Burnham’s name: his gomustas had assured him that this was the time-honoured practice of the old Raja, who had agreed with his partner long ago that there was no need to send every note across town for endorsement – it was quicker and more efficient to have the needful done at the Halder residence. As it happened, the old Raja had never had a good hand in English, and the task had been performed for him by an underling; Neel, being something of a perfectionist in matters of calligraphy, had disliked the secretaries’ crude script and had insisted on doing the job himself. All this was well known to Benjamin Burnham.

  ‘I am afraid,’ Neel said, ‘that you have gone to much trouble for no reason. Mr Burnham will resolve this misunderstanding in a matter of minutes.’

  The Major coughed into his fist in embarrassment. ‘I am afraid I must still do my duty, sir.’

  ‘But surely,’ Neel protested, ‘there will be no need, if Mr Burnham explains what happened?’

  After a brief pause, the Commissioner said: ‘It was Mr Burnham, sir, who alerted us to the crime.’

  ‘What?’ Neel gave a start of disbelief. ‘But there is no crime . . .’

  ‘This is a forged signature, sir. And there is a great deal of money at stake.’

  ‘To write a man’s name is not the same, surely, as forging his signature?’

  ‘That depends on the intent, sir, which is for the court to decide,’ said the Major. ‘You may be sure that you will be given ample opportunity to make your case.’

  ‘And in the meanwhile?’

  ‘You must permit me to accompany you to Lalbazar.’

  ‘To the jail?’ said Neel. ‘Like a common criminal?’

  ‘Hardly that,’ the Major said. ‘We will make sure of your comfort; in consideration of your place in native society, we will even allow you to receive food from home.’

  Now, at last, it began to sink in that the inconceivable was about to happen: the Raja of Raskhali was to be taken away by the police and locked in prison. Certain as he was that he would be acquitted, Neel knew that his family’s reputation would never again be what it was, not after a crowd of neighbours had witnessed his arrest and forcible removal – all his relatives, his dependants, his son, even Elokeshi, would be mired in the shame.

  ‘Do we have to go now?’ Neel demurred. ‘Today? In front of all my people?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Major Hall, ‘I am afraid I can give you no more than a few minutes – to gather some clothes and personal effects.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Neel was turning to go when the Major said, sharply: ‘I see that your men are in a state of some excitement. You should be aware that in the event of a disturbance, you will be held responsible and your case will suffer in court.’

  ‘I understand,’ Neel said. ‘You need have no fear.’

  The veranda adjoining the zemindar’s office looked down upon a courtyard, and as he was stepping out, to make his way downstairs, Neel saw that this enclosure had suddenly turned white: his female relatives and dependants had come pouring out, in their widow’s garb; catching sight of him now, they began a soft keening that turned quickly louder and more agitated; some flung themselves on the ground, while others began to beat their breasts. There was no question now of going back to the main house: Neel knew he would not be able to bring himself to force a passage through that throng. He waited just long enough to make sure that his wife, Malati, was not present among the women: even in the confusion of that moment, it was a great relief to know that she had not stepped out of the zenana – he was spared, at least, the humiliation of having the veil of her seclusion torn away.

  Huzoor: Parimal appeared beside him, with a bag in hand. I have packed a few things – all that you will need.

  Neel reached out in gratitude and squeezed his retainer’s hands: all his life, Parimal had known exactly what he needed, often before he himself had known the want, but he had never felt as deeply indebted to him as he did now. He put out a hand to take the bag, but Parimal would not give it to him.

  How can you carry your own luggage, huzoor? In front of the world’s eyes?

  The absurdity of this brought a smile to Neel’s lips; he said: Do you know where they’re taking me, Parimal?

  Huzoor . . . Parimal lowered his voice to a whisper: If you but give the word, our men will fight back. You could escape . . . you could be concealed . . .

  For a wild instant, the idea of escape lodged in Neel’s mind – but only to vanish, as he recalled the map that hung in his daftar, and the red stain of Empire that had spread so quickly across it. Where would I hide? he said. The piyadas of Raskhali can’t fight the battalions of the East India Company. No, there’s nothing to be done.

  Neel turned away from Parimal to step back into his daftar, where the Major was waiting for him, with a hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘I am ready,’ said Neel. ‘Let us be done with this.’

  Ringed by a half-dozen uniformed constables, Neel made his way down the stairs. When he stepped into the courtyard the voices of the white-clad women rose once again to a shriek and they threw themselves at the constables, trying to reach across their batons, to the prisoner. Neel held his head high, but he could not bring himself to meet their gaze; it was only when he was at the gates that he allowed himself to glance back. No sooner did he turn than his eyes met those of his wife, Malati, and it was as if he had never seen her before. The covers had dropped from her ever-veiled face, and she had torn open the bindings of her braids so that her hair lay on her shoulders like a dark shroud of grief. Neel stumbled and lowered his eyes; he could not bear for her to look at him; it was as if the uncovering of her face had stripped the veil from his own manhood, leaving him naked and exposed to the gloating pity of the world, to a shame that could never be overcome.

  A covered hackney carriage was waiting in the lane outside and when Neel sat down in it, the Major took the seat opposite his. He was clearly relieved to have accomplished his end without violence, and as the horses began to move, he said, in a kinder tone than he had earlier used: ‘I am sure it will all be sorted out quite soon.’

  The carriage arrived at the end of the lane, and as it was turning the corner, Neel swivelled in his seat to take a last look at his house. He could see only the roof of the Raskhali Rajbari, and on it, outlined against the dimming sky, his son’s head, leaning on a parapet, as if in wait: he recalled that he had said he would be back in ten minutes, and this seemed to him now the most unpardonable of all
the lies in his life.

  Ever since that night by the river, when Deeti had come to his help, Kalua had kept count of the days on which he was granted a glimpse of her, and the empty days in between. The tally was kept neither with any specific intention, nor as an expression of hope – for Kalua knew full well that between her and himself, none but the most tenuous connection could exist – yet the patient enumeration happened in his head whether he liked it or not: he was powerless to make it cease, for his mind, slow and plodding in some respects, had a way of seeking the safety of numbers. Thus it was that when Kalua heard of Deeti’s husband’s death, he knew that exactly twenty days had elapsed since that afternoon when she asked for his help in bringing Hukam Singh back from the opium factory.

  The news came to him by chance: it was evening, and he was on his way back to his dwelling, in his cart, at the end of the day, when he was stopped by two men who were travelling on foot. Kalua knew they had come a long way because their dhotis were dark with dust and they were leaning heavily on their sticks. They held up their hands as he was passing by, and when his cart rumbled to a stop, they asked if he knew the dwelling of Hukam Singh, the former sepoy. I know it, said Kalua, and he pointed down the road and told them that to get there they would have to walk straight for two kos, and turn left after reaching a large tamarind tree. Then, after following a path through the fields for one hundred and twenty paces, they would have to turn left again, to walk another two hundred and sixty. The men were dismayed: It’s almost dark, how will we find these paths? Just keep looking, said Kalua. And how long will it take? An hour, said Kalua, but maybe less.

  The men began to plead with him to take them there in his cart: or they would be late, they said, and would miss everything. Late for what? Kalua asked, and the older of the two men said: For Hukam Singh’s cremation and . . .

  He was about to say something else, when his companion nudged him sharply with his stick.

  Has Hukam Singh passed away? Kalua asked.

  Yes, late last night. We set out as soon as we heard the news.

  All right then, said Kalua. Come. I’ll take you there.

  The two men climbed on to the rear of the cart and Kalua shook his reins to set his oxen moving. After a good while had passed, Kalua inquired cautiously: And what of Hukam Singh’s wife?

  Let’s see what happens, said the older man. Maybe we’ll know tonight . . .

  But here again he was interrupted by his companion and the sentence was never finished.

  The oddly surreptitious behaviour of the two men set Kalua to wondering whether something untoward was under way. He made it his practice to think hard about everything he saw around him: as the cart rolled down the road, he asked himself why these men, who didn’t know Hukam Singh well enough to be aware of the location of his dwelling, would come such a great distance to be present at his cremation. And why was the cremation to be near the dead man’s home rather than in the cremation ghat? No: there was something in this that was out of the ordinary. Kalua became more and more convinced of this as they approached their destination – for he saw now that there were a great many others heading towards the same place, more than seemed likely to attend the funeral of a man like Hukam Singh, known by the world to be an incorrigible afeemkhor. When they reached the dwelling, his suspicions deepened, for he saw that the pyre was a great mound of wood, on the banks of the Ganga. Not only was it far larger than was necessary for the cremation of a single man, it was surrounded by a profusion of offerings and objects, as if it were being readied for some larger purpose.

  It was dark now, and after the two travellers had alighted, Kalua tethered his ox-cart in a field, some distance away, and returned on foot to the pyre. There were some hundred or so people there, and by listening to their conversations, he soon picked up the whispered sibilance of a word – ‘sati’. It was all clear now: he understood. He made his way back, in the dark, to his tethered cart, and lay in it a while, to think through his next move. He thought slowly and carefully, examining the merits and drawbacks of several possible courses of action. Only one plan survived the winnowing, and when he rose to his feet again, he knew exactly what he had to do. First, he took the yoke off his oxen and freed them, to wander off along the riverbank: this was the most difficult part of all, for he loved those two animals as if they were his kin. Then, one nail at a time, he ripped the bamboo platform from the axle of his cart, and tied a rope tightly and securely around its middle. The platform was a large unwieldy object, but for Kalua the weight was negligible, and he had no trouble slinging it over his back. Keeping to the shadows, he crept along the river till he came to a sandbank that overlooked the pyre. He laid the bamboo platform on the sand and flattened himself on it, taking care to stay out of sight.

  The clearing around the pyre was illuminated by many small fires, so when Hukam Singh’s body was carried out of his dwelling, in procession, and laid upon the mound, Kalua had a clear view. Following close behind was a second procession, and upon its entry into the clearing, Kalua saw that it was headed by Deeti, in a resplendent white sari – except that she was slumped over, barely upright: she would not have been able to stand on her own feet, much less walk, had she not been supported by her brother-in-law, Chandan Singh, and several others. Half dragged and half carried, she was brought to the pyre and made to sit cross-legged on it, beside her husband’s corpse. Now there was an outbreak of chanting as heaps of kindling were piled around her, and doused with ghee and oil to ready them for the fire.

  On the sandbank, Kalua bided his time, counting, counting, to calm himself: his main asset, he knew, was neither his power nor his agility, but rather the element of surprise – for even he, with all his strength, could not hope to fight off fifty men or more. So he waited and waited, until the pyre was lit and everyone was intent upon the progress of the flames. Now, still keeping to the shadows, he crept down to the edge of the crowd and rose to his feet. Unloosing a roar, he began to whirl the bamboo platform above his head, holding it by the end of its rope. The heavy, sharp-edged object became a blur, cracking heads and breaking bones, clearing a path through the crowd – people fled from the hurtling projectile, like cattle scattering before some whirling demon. Racing to the mound, Kalua placed the platform against the fire, scrambled to the top, and snatched Deeti from the flames. With her inert body slung over his shoulder, he jumped back to the ground and ran towards the river, dragging the now-smouldering bamboo rectangle behind him, on its rope. On reaching the water, he thrust the platform into the river and placed Deeti upon it. Then, pushing free of the shore, he threw himself flat on the improvised raft and began to kick his heels in the water, steering out towards midstream. All of this was the work of a minute or two and by the time Chandan Singh and his cohorts gave chase, the river had carried Kalua and Deeti away from the flaming pyre, into the dark of the night.

  The raft wobbled and spun as the currents swept it downstream, and every once in a while, a slick of water would run streaming over its surface. Under the impact of these dousings, the fog that clouded Deeti’s mind began slowly to dispel and she became aware that she was on a river and there was a man beside her, holding her in place with his arm. None of this was surprising, for it was in exactly this way that she had expected to awaken from the flames – afloat in the netherworld, on the Baitarini River, in the custody of Charak, the boatman of the dead. Such was her fear of what she would see that she did not open her eyes: every wave, she imagined, was carrying her closer to the far bank, where the god of death, Jamaraj, held sway.

  At length, when the journey showed no signs of ending, she plucked up the courage to ask how long the river was and how far the destination. There was no answer, so she called out the name of the boatman of the dead. Then, through the whisper of a deep, hoarse voice it was made known to her that she was alive, in the company of Kalua, on the Ganga – and there was no destination or aim to their journey except to escape. Even then she did not feel herself to be living in t
he same sense as before: a curious feeling, of joy mixed with resignation, crept into her heart, for it was as if she really had died and been delivered betimes in rebirth, to her next life: she had shed the body of the old Deeti, with the burden of its karma; she had paid the price her stars had demanded of her, and was free now to create a new destiny as she willed, with whom she chose – and she knew that it was with Kalua that this life would be lived, until another death claimed the body that he had torn from the flames.

  Now there was a soft lapping and grinding, as Kalua nudged the raft to shore, and when it was lodged in the sand, he picked her up in his arms and placed her on the bank. Then, lifting up the raft, he disappeared into a stand of tall rushes, and when he came back to fetch her, she saw that he had laid the platform down in such a way as to turn it into a palette, a small, level island, hidden within the riverbank’s greenery. After he had laid her on this bamboo floor, he drew back, as if to retreat and go elsewhere, and she understood that he was afraid, unsure of how she would respond to his presence, now that she was safe on land. She called to him, Kalua, come, don’t leave me alone in this unknown place, come here. But when he lay down, she too was afraid: all of a sudden she was aware of how cold her body was, after its long immersion, and of the sopping wetness of her white sari. She began to shiver, and her hand, shaking, came upon his and she knew that he too was trembling, and slowly their bodies inched closer: as each sought the other’s warmth, their damp, sodden clothing came unspooled, his langot and her sari. Now it was as though she was on the water again: she remembered his touch and how he had held her to his chest with his arm. On the side of her face that was pressed to his, she could feel the gentle abrasion of his unshaved cheek – on the other side, which was flattened against the deck, she could hear the whispering of the earth and the river, and they were saying to her that she was alive, alive, and suddenly it was as if her body was awake to the world as it had never been before, flowing like the river’s waves, and as open and fecund as the reed-covered bank.