Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg

by H. R. F. Keating

  And in due course he came out on to the river road at a point he recognized as being not far from the place where he had accosted by mistake the lonely Jain holy man. He was still there too, a softly meandering white figure beside the umbrella-like banyan under the grey rain-threatening sky. Ghote cycled past him, momentarily contrasting his ritual of non-violentness with the ritual hatred he had left behind in the main street.

  Yet he too was engaged himself, he reflected, on an errand of violence. He was going to try to browbeat the Swami into silence by means of a piece of secret knowledge that he happened to have acquired.

  He swung round the curve in the road that would reveal the ruined temple.

  And jammed on the brakes of his battleship machine with a wet squeal.

  There, spread all across the wide road in front of him, was another group of protesters, evidently coming away from the Swami in order to pour new zeal into the main demonstration in the town. And immediately it was obvious that the mood of this crowd was for the most part very different from that of the mob outside the police-station. Certainly the central bulk of the oncomers were making sounds full of sharp despair.

  Ghote listened carefully for a moment or two.

  Yes, they were not shouting ‘Ghote go’. What were the words now?

  He listened again.

  He had them. ‘Save our Swami. Save our Swami.’ That was it.

  And surely this meant that the Swami was failing. He might even be at the point of death. The crowd would turn into savages if he were to die.

  Then he noticed that just to one side of the leaders of the straggling crowd there were three men who looked a little different from the others. They were all heavily-built and each carried a short, sturdy pole on which a piece of cardboard had been fixed bearing the old words ‘Ghote Go’. The lettering was neat and bold, and to Ghote’s quickly reacting imagination seemed to indicate an unlikely degree of organization. The men too, though not the goondas of the night before, looked far from being the idealistic sort of people who might be expected to be leading a protest march. They were walking along tight-lipped and without shouting. And they were looking keenly from side to side.

  Had the Chairman sent them out to the temple to spearhead further protests? And had he given them an effective description of the man they were to chase from the town or to put out of action altogether?

  He was unable to repress a hard tremble that moved up his body from calves to shoulders.

  It was too late to retreat. That was certain. If he turned and fled he would draw the attention of everyone in that widespread crowd to himself. There was no one else near him, nothing else for them to look at.

  And to one side there was the swollen mass of the river, a healthy gurgling yellow barrier. While on the far side of the road a steep bank made flight equally impracticable.

  By now he had recovered a little from his initial shock and he realized there was only one thing to do. He would have to move very slowly and quietly out of the mob’s way. Anything in the nature of a violent movement would inevitably draw the three goondas’ particular notice.

  Perhaps, of course, they were already discussing among themselves whether this figure on the bicycle was the one they were out to find.

  Ghote dismounted and began pushing the ironclad machine towards the river side. He calculated that a plunge into water for a second time was his only slim chance of escaping if he had to. But the river looked as if it would be nothing like as easy to cross as the tank. It was flowing strongly as could be, and the thought of being swept along while a vengeful crowd kept pace with him on the bank was not one to be dwelt on.

  Ten yards to go to the edge of the road.

  Five.

  He was there. And no arm had been extended pointing in his direction, no sharp cry of pursuit had superimposed itself over the almost plaintive shouting of ‘Save our Swami’.

  He slewed the bicycle round and stood still. Within a few moments one of the wings of the mob was passing him, a cluster of hangers-on by the looks of things, much less affected than most by the prevailing emotion. A youth in a checked shirt with a stubby knife brazenly stuck in his belt halted just in front of him.

  ‘Are you coming to the police-station, bhai?’ he demanded.

  Ghote licked his lips.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I am on business today.’

  ‘Business? Business?’ the youth jeered. ‘What business is more important than getting that wicked Ghote out of our town? Are you coming?’

  ‘Well,’ Ghote answered, ‘perhaps I could catch you up when I have completed what I have to do. I have bicycle, you see.’

  He patted the machine’s broad saddle.

  ‘Are you coming rightaway, or am I throwing that bicycle in the river?’ the young man said.

  Ghote thought fast. He had no doubt he could deal with an idle boaster like this easily enough on his own. But any scuffle might draw yet more attention to him.

  ‘Are you coming?’ the youth demanded again.

  For a moment Ghote hesitated.

  Then two youths, each also wearing a colourful shirt, started tugging at their companion’s arms.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ the first of them said to him.

  ‘Come on, or we shall be right at back for throwing stones at the policewallas,’ the other added.

  The youth with the knife was in two minds. But abruptly the attraction of stone-throwing won.

  ‘You wait till I come back,’ he shouted threateningly at Ghote.

  And then he hurried off after his friends.

  Ghote waited where he was while the rest of the crowd marched by him. Then he quietly mounted his heavy bicycle and pedalled on till he came to the ruined temple once more.

  There were many fewer people about than there had been on his first visit. Down among the crop of temporary shelter-like huts on the wide river strand there was scarcely a soul to be seen, merely two or three tattered and crouching old women sitting round a wisp of a fire. Ghote supposed that all the rest of the inhabitants of this camp – and it had grown larger than on his previous visit unless he was much mistaken – had gone, as particular devotees of the Swami, on this new march of protest over his declining condition.

  For a moment he confronted the possibility of encountering them all if the Swami should die. And then resolutely he thrust the thought out of his head. The Swami’s death would be an event so overwhelmingly appalling that it was not even to be considered.

  Quickly Ghote got off the bicycle, pushed it out of sight behind the split and tortured trunk of an old pipal tree and clipped his chain and padlock round the rear wheel.

  For an instant he looked at the egg-box on the carrier. The Swami had objected in no uncertain terms to his bringing it into the temple on his first visit, should he take it in now?

  He decided that he would not. What he was going to say to the bad-tempered old holy man would cast him down enough. There was no need deliberately to annoy him as well.

  He marched quickly over to the temple building. Inside it was nearly deserted, though not quite so. Certainly there were many fewer people than there had been last time. Only two beggars sat sprawled in the entrance, one of them with a huge swelled leg that must prevent him walking, the other with no legs at all, just two rag-wrapped stumps.

  But at the gloomy back of the temple the alcove where the Swami had sat before was empty. Only its army of differently-framed photographs, their renewed marigold garlands smelling pungently as ever, testified that this was a shrine.

  Had he died then? Surely not. The old women pottering about the building were subdued but not utterly downcast.

  He cautiously explored the furthermost depths of the half-ruined hall. And at last he came upon a low archway right at the back. He peered round it.

  He found a long, narrow room, lit only by a split in its stone walls through which there penetrated a greenish light, filtered by the pale leaves of the pipal trees all round the temple. In the room w
ere two figures.

  There was the Swami, sitting cross-legged almost exactly as he had been before in his alcove, and there was another man, the sight of whom caused Ghote’s mouth to go suddenly dry with apprehension.

  He was a doctor. No doubt about it. A stethoscope hung round his neck, its silvery end-piece glinting in the thick gloom. A Sikh, bushy-bearded and burly, he wore an open-necked dark blue shirt and dark trousers and a fine white turban bound on with surgical neatness.

  A doctor. So it had come to that.

  Ghote nerved himself up and went in. When he was half way across towards the Sikh he coughed, once and sharply.

  The doctor swung round.

  ‘Oh,’ he said in sudden puzzlement. ‘Who are you? You’re not from the hospital?’

  ‘You were expecting somebody from the hospital?’ Ghote asked, his heart sinking further.

  ‘The Medical Superintendent was to send some drugs I thought I might need, later on,’ the Sikh said.

  He frowned. Ghote could see his bushy eyebrows contract.

  ‘But who are you then, if you’re not from the hospital?’ he asked.

  ‘My name is Ghote.’

  ‘Ghote – Good God, you’re not the fellow … ?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ghote, ‘I am.’

  The Sikh looked at him in silence for a second or two. Then he spoke.

  ‘Better go over there. I don’t want him unnecessarily disturbed.’

  He jerked his head back at the motionless figure of the Swami.

  They walked together back down the long darkened room to the doorway. There Ghote felt he could speak a little more loudly.

  ‘His condition is serious then?’ he asked.

  The doctor looked at him speculatively.

  ‘Well,’ he replied at last, ‘no point in sparing you the truth. Yes, his condition is bad. He could go at any time.’

  He shrugged his broad shoulders beneath their blue shirt.

  ‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘he could last some while longer. It’s a curious thing the will, you know. Something our medical science can never quite reckon with.’

  ‘I have got to talk with him,’ Ghote said.

  ‘You have? He’s my patient, you know. I don’t think I’m going to let you.’

  ‘He’s your patient?’ Ghote asked. ‘What exactly does that mean?’

  ‘Mean? Mean? I don’t follow.’

  ‘Put it this way. Whose doctor are you? Were you sent here by the Municipal Chairman?’

  The Sikh grinned suddenly. White teeth splitting the curly black beard.

  ‘Good lord, no,’ he said. ‘Dr Patil up at the hospital sent me, so far as anyone did. At first we looked in just every so often, though now someone’s on duty all the time. It’s me for the rest of today, and he’s my boy.’

  Ghote had found this brisk dismissal of the Chairman and his wide-flung nets reassuring.

  ‘I will tell you what my trouble is,’ he said.

  ‘Your trouble, old man,’ said the Sikh, ‘is that if my patient dies you’re going to get torn into little pieces.’

  ‘I know that, but this is something different. You see, I have discovered that that old man there is the brother of the Chairman’s father-in-law.’

  The Sikh took a little time to take this in and consider its implications.

  ‘I see that you would indeed want to talk with him,’ he said at last. ‘And since, I suppose, it will be the end of his fast, by all means go ahead. But take it easy, you know. Any violent shock might topple him over.’

  Ghote looked at the free-and-easy figure beside him with some apprehension.

  ‘But I shall nevertheless be administering something of a violent shock,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, old boy. And all I can say is good luck to you.’

  The Sikh grinned broadly through his dark beard.

  ‘You deserve it,’ he said. ‘The wicked old man.’

  He offered him then to Ghote with a gesture of invitation.

  Ghote went back down the long room till he was standing just in front of the unmoving Swami. He crouched down. Once again he was face to face with the old man.

  He saw now that the beady eyes were wide open and might well be taking in the fact of who it was before him. He thought he saw too that the fast-purified flesh, visible in the small centre of that vast, gushing, ash-smeared beard, looked even more translucent than it had before.

  He hardly dared speak.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ he said at last.

  ‘I told you to go,’ came the fiercely irate voice he remembered.

  He felt a little encouraged.

  ‘But it was my duty to stay,’ he replied. ‘And I did stay. And while I stayed I learnt some facts. Facts, not about the man you are trying to protect –’

  ‘He is not to have his peace broken,’ the Swami suddenly burst in, a gush of blood seeming to come up into the soap-like pallor of his flesh.

  ‘It is not about him that I learnt what I learnt,’ Ghote went on after a few moments’ pause. ‘I regret to have to state that it is about you yourself.’

  He looked intently at the grey jutting beard so close in front of him, and at the two eyes that burned steadily in the middle of it. But he saw no sign there of the dawning of what he had to say.

  Implacably he went on.

  ‘I learnt that you are the uncle of his wife,’ he said.

  He expected a reaction once the words had been said. None came.

  He tried again. Perhaps the fasting old man could no longer take in everything that was said to him.

  ‘I learnt that the Chairman you are trying to protect is your close relative, and that he came here in secret and begged you to save him from investigation.’

  The beady eyes had taken it in. No doubt about that.

  For a long time the still figure seated level with him said not a word. Then at last Ghote saw the answer coming, almost as if it was possible to observe its progress through the translucent flesh.

  But it was not at all the answer he expected.

  ‘Leave this town.’

  He actually hopped back half a pace with the violence of the assault.

  ‘You – You cannot continue your attempts to make me go when it will be known that you are the Municipal Chairman’s uncle,’ he said.

  The eyes set in the middle of the gushing ash-plastered beard glowed fierily.

  ‘I am telling you to go,’ the Swami spat. ‘I am telling you to get out. You are coming and interfering where you are not wanted, and you are to go.’

  ‘I shall make it known about you and the Chairman,’ Ghote threatened.

  ‘I will protect my own family,’ the Swami declared, poking his head furiously forward. ‘I will protect him, and no one will lift their voice against me.’

  ‘But why?’ Ghote burst out. ‘Why are you protecting him?’

  ‘I protect him. Go from this town. I fast to death until you go.’

  And those were the last words that Ghote was able to get out of him.

  The interview petered to an end in a highly unsatisfactory way with Ghote, alternately standing and crouching, posing a series of more and more baffled questions and getting absolutely no answers, not so much as a sign of recognition. Eventually the Sikh doctor, who had come up and was observing the scene with clinical interest, broke in.

  ‘You might as well give up, old man,’ he said. ‘You won’t get a word out of him any more, and I dare say I shall find the heart-beat rate gone all to hell.’

  The possibility of seeing the Swami collapse lifeless at that very moment chilled Ghote like a plunge into an icy stream.

  ‘I can see I must go,’ he said.

  ‘From the town?’ the Sikh inquired cheerfully.

  Ghote almost jumped off the floor with shock.

  ‘Certainly not,’ he replied. ‘I have my duty to stay here and I will stay. There is still plenty for an investigating officer to inquire into. The Chairman thinks he can banish every
witness from the town. But we will see how well he can do it really.’

  13

  Before setting out in pursuit of the witness the Municipal Chairman had so cunningly attempted to put out of reach, Ghote returned to the besieged police-station.

  If the Swami could not be persuaded to call off his campaign, he reasoned, then the least that could be done was to attempt to spread the facts about his relationship with the Chairman through the town and perhaps bite away at his influence in this manner. But he himself had no resources for rumour-spreading. To set a story going in the town he would have to go to the extent of telephoning the Eminent Figure in Bombay and waiting for him to telephone back to the small band of his supporters on the spot, a band which no doubt would grow like a swarm of bees if ever the Chairman were dislodged.

  And the police-station was the only place from which Ghote could make a call. Humiliatingly, he lacked the money to do so from anywhere else.

  But he found it harder to get back in than he had to get out. The newly-reinforced mob was not just yelling and shouting in the main street now. Bands and offshoots from it were roaming the lanes of the town everywhere, shouting slogans each according to its own particular convictions, or simply making mischief.

  Several times he had to pedal his battleship-heavy bicycle for all he was worth in a direction that took him farther away from his objective in order to evade one or other of these bands. And on other occasions he had to skulk in a by-turning while noisy demonstrators went shouting by. Once even he had briefly to join one of the bands, dismounting from the bicycle and trudging along pushing it and shouting, without much enthusiasm, ‘Ghote go, Ghote go.’

  At last however he reached the mud-thick and ill-smelling lane at the rear of the police-station, only to be beset by new doubts.

  What would his reception be here? Since he had left Superintendent Chavan, now unmasked as an open opponent, would have had plenty of time to poison the minds of every single constable in the station against him.

  But apparently the superintendent’s code of behaviour had ruled this out. The constable who answered his rattling at the narrow iron gate, the same man who had responded to his last call at the same place, was every bit as polite as before and within two minutes of wheeling the dreadnought bicycle into the safety of the compound Inspector Popatkar’s office door was safely shut behind him.