The Calcutta Chromosome

by Amitav Gosh

  Then the gesture changed: the fingers came together, pointing upwards, in a little dipping motion. That meant wait; there's more. Her screen went blank and her voice mechanism clicked on.

  The message might still be found, Ava told him. It would just take a while. It had been typed on one of those oldfashioned, contact-based alphabetical keyboards. The electronic signals emitted by the keys were probably still traceable. It was simply a question of matching the electronic 'fingerprint' of Murugan's E-mail message to every electronic signal that was still alive in the ionosphere.

  Antar keyed in a query asking how long the whole procedure would take.

  Ava took a moment to answer. It would mean sifting through about six thousand eight hundred and ninety-two trillion cufiabytes, came the response, in other words, roughly eighty-five billion times the estimated sum of every dactylographic act ever performed by a human being. It was certain to take at least fifteen minutes.

  Antar keyed in two names, Cunningham and Farley, and cut Ava loose.

  Suddenly Antar was very tired. He looked down and noticed that there was a mild tremor in his hand. His heart sank as he touched his forehead and cheek. They were hot and clammy: it felt like the start of one of his bouts of fever. Evidently he would have to forgo his walk to Penn Station today.

  In a way Antar was almost relieved. He decided to lie down while Ava searched the skies.

  Antar had almost drifted off to sleep when Ava began to chirrup a summons twenty minutes later. Heaving off his bedclothes, he rose shakily to his feet and wrapped himself in a dressing gown. Then he made his way down the corridor to his living room.

  A message was waiting for him on Ava's screen: the search had yielded a few traces of Murugan's lost E-mail message. But the signals were faint and possibly distorted. Ava had reconstructed a semblance of a narrative by running the retrieved fragments through a Storyline algorithm. But she was unable to vouch for the authenticity of the restored text.

  Antar typed in a query asking if Ava could generate an image-simulacrum of the text with her Simultaneous Visualization program. That way all he'd have to do to review the text was to lock himself into his Sim Vis visor. He could just lie back and watch: Ava would do the rest. His hands felt very unsteady now: he knew he wasn't up to the task of reading through a long document.

  A hand appeared on Ava's screen, sketching a gesture of regret. The answer was negative: the text was too corrupt to do a continuous image conversion. The best she could do was provide a verbal rendition.

  Antar winced: he hated listening to Ava read, in her flat, uninflected voice. But on the other hand he was in no position to do it himself in his current state.

  Reaching for his headphones, Antar snapped them into place.

  Chapter 20

  IT WAS PAST ELEVEN when Urmila got home. The flat was in darkness and everybody was in bed.

  She let herself in, as quietly as she could, and stood by the front door while her eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness. Her younger brother was snoring in the sitting room. He had played in a Second Division football match that afternoon: one of the stringers for the sports page had come over to the reporting desk to tell her that he'd almost scored. She tiptoed into the sitting room and found him lying on the sofa, with the light on. He was barebodied, dressed only in his team's blue sweatpants, with one foot on the floor and one arm thrown over the back of the sofa. His head was on the armrest with his tongue lolling out of his open mouth, trailing a ribbon of drool.

  A plateful of food was waiting for her in the kitchen, under a net cover. The net seemed to dissolve when she turned the light on; a swarm of cockroaches melted away into the cracks and corners. 'Isn't anyone going to be allowed to sleep?' her older brother shouted, from the bedroom he shared with his wife and three children. 'Who's turned the light on at this time of the night? '

  Urmila leapt for the switch, almost dropping her plate. During the day her older brother worked as a salesman for a company that marketed shares and stock offerings. In the evenings he earned a little extra by doing tuitions for schoolchildren. He was always exhausted at night.

  She stumbled out of the kitchen in the dark, balancing her plate carefully in her hands. She made her way to the bathroom, edging past the campbed where she slept, and half-closed the door before switching on a light. Seating herself on the edge of the bed she began to pick at the plateful of cold dhal and chapattis.

  There was a rustle and a footstep in the landing and she looked up to see her mother, standing beside the camp bed, dressed in her white night-time sari. 'When did you get in?' her mother said sleepily. 'I waited and waited… '

  'Why?' said Urmila. 'You shouldn't stay up so late – you remember what the homoeopath said.'

  Motioning to her to keep her voice down, her mother seated herself beside Urmila and put a hand on her knee.

  'I had to tell you tonight Urmi,' she whispered. 'There's some good news, some really good news, I knew you would be so happy.'

  'What?' said Urmila.

  'That's what I was going to tell you: we had a phone call from the Secretary of the Wicket Club at eight o'clock. About your brother, Dinu. I was the one who answered and, let me tell you the first thing I said was: "Oh, if only my daughter was here, she would be so happy… "

  The member-secretary of the Wicket Club had telephoned, she said, to let them know that a senior incumbent of the club's executive committee was going to pay them a call the next day, in person, with a view to discussing Dinu's prospects.

  'You know what this means Urmi?' her mother said, glowing with pleasure at the sudden good fortune that had befallen her son.

  'What?' said Urmila.

  'It means they want to give your brother a First Division contract. Everyone says so – if they're sending an E.C. Member then it means a First Division contract, definitely.'

  'Are you sure?' said Urmila. 'We've heard this talk about a First Division contract so many times but nothing ever seems to come of it.'

  'But this time's different,' her mother cried. She put an arm around Urmila's shoulders and pulled her close. 'Just think, Urmi; a First Division contract – money, maybe a flat. At last you'll be able to give up this stupid job and stay at home. Everything will be paid. Maybe we can even get you married before it's too late. We can put an advertisement in the papers… '

  'Ma, that's enough,' Urmila said wearily, knowing exactly what was to follow: that her time was running out; her hair was thinning; she looked older than she should; the neighbours were talking about how late she got home…

  Urmila broke in quickly, before the litany could get fully under way. 'Before you start planning my wedding,' she said, 'let's see if we can get the contract signed.'

  Her mother did not fail to notice the sceptical note in her voice. 'I thought you would be glad, Urmi,' she said with a catch in her voice. 'I thought it would make you happy to hear our news. But instead all you do is pull a long face. You just don't care about us any more; all you think about is that awful job of yours.'

  'Ma, if I didn't have the job,' Urmila said wearily, 'how would we get by? How far would Baba's pension go? How would we feed the children? Can you tell me that?'

  Her mother paid her no attention; she was dabbing her eyes now. 'That's all you think about,' she said. 'Money, money, money. You have no place in your heart for our joys and sorrows. You should have seen how happy your brother was when I told him about the phone call from the Club: the first person he thought about was you. He said: "Didi must cook fish tomorrow, something special like ilish-mach so we can ask the Club's representative to stay for dinner."

  Urmila threw her a look of disbelief. 'Ma, I can't cook fish tomorrow morning,' she said. 'I have to be at a press conference at nine – the Communications Minister is arriving on an early-morning flight from Delhi. That means I have to leave the house by eight fifteen at the latest otherwise I'll never get to Dalhousie on time. You know what the traffic is like.'

  The first note
s of a wail escaped her mother's lips. 'Urmi, what are you saying?' she sobbed. 'Are you saying your job is more important than your brother's life? Are you telling me that some umbrella-head minister from Delhi is more important than us?'

  She sobbed on while Urmila sat silent on the edge of the bed. Finally she put her plate down and asked, in exasperation: 'Has someone bought the fish?'

  'No,' her mother said. 'There wasn't time and none of us had the money. You'll have to get it tomorrow morning from Gariahat.'

  'I can't go to Gariahat in the morning,' Urmila cried in protest. But she gave up the moment the words were out of her mouth. It was futile to argue; in the end, she knew, she would have to go herself. Her father wouldn't go because it would interfere with his early-morning breathing exercises; her brothers wouldn't go because they would be asleep; her sister-in-law wouldn't go because no one would dare ask her. And as for her mother, she wouldn't go either, and if she, Urmila, were to ask, she would burst into tears and say: 'How could you say this to me? Don't you know the homoeopath told me never to go out early in the morning because of my asthma?'

  Then Urmila would want to point out that her asthma didn't stop her going to see her guru in Dhakuria every other day when he did his special dawn appearance to show himself to his followers in early-morning sunlight. But she knew she wouldn't say it, no matter how much she might want to. Instead of saying it to her mother, she would say it to herself, as she went hurtling towards Dalhousie in a minibus, with elbows digging into her back and her nose stuck in somebody's armpit. She would keep mouthing the words to herself over and over again – but you go to your guru every other morning, Ma – and she would get angrier and angrier until finally she did something terrible, as she did the other day, when her mother had made her run down to the ironing-man's stall to fetch her brother's football shorts before catching the minibus: she'd worked herself into such a fury, standing on the bus, mouthing her unsaid protests, that in the end she picked up her foot and jammed it down on someone's instep. She didn't even know why she'd done that; she just wanted to feel the crunch as the heel of her shoe dug into flesh and bone. And she had enjoyed herself too, exchanging insults with the fat little man whose foot she'd stepped on; they shouted at each other all the way from Lansdowne to Lord Sinha Road, until she finally reduced him to browbeaten silence.

  . She felt her mother's hands gripping her shoulder. 'Don't fall asleep yet, Urmi,' she said. 'Tell me first: will you get the fish and cook it?'

  'Maybe I won't have to,' she said sleepily. 'Maybe one of the fish-sellers will come around.'

  'But will you do it anyway?' her mother insisted.

  'All right,' Urmila said, in resignation. 'I will – now let me go to sleep.'

  Her mother gave her shoulder a pat. 'I knew you would,' she said. 'My sweet little Urmi. Oh, your brother will be so happy. You should have seen how excited he was when I told him that Romen Haldar was coming to our house… '

  It took a moment for the name to filter through and then Urmila sat up, abruptly.

  'Who?' she said, in surprise.

  'Romen Haldar,' said her mother again. 'He's the one who's coming to visit us, from the Club. You know who he is don't you?'

  'Yes,' Urmila said sleepily. 'Yes, I know who he is. It's just a coincidence, that's all.'

  Chapter 21

  ELIJAH MONROE FARLEY left for India in October 1893, Ava began, two years after his departure from the research laboratories of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Several friends and acquaintances travelled up to New York to send him off, including his mentor, the venerable malaria specialist W. S. Thayer, and the two other members of his erstwhile team, W. G. MacCallum and Eugene L. Opie. By the summer of 1894 the young Reverend Farley was installed in a small charitable clinic in the remote township of Barich, in the eastern foothills of the Himalayas. The clinic was run by the American Ecumenical Mission and its staff were the only trained medical personnel in the district.

  Farley was twenty-six, a tall, lanky man, with ginger hair and moss-green eyes. Austere and contemplative by nature, he adapted easily to the rigours of his new calling. If at all he missed his earlier vocation as scientist, he let no one know: his every waking hour was consumed by the clinic.

  Farley had been at the clinic five months before he had his first letter. It was from his old friend and colleague, Eugene Opie in Baltimore. The letter consisted for the most part of trivialities concerning the weather and the marital and professional circumstances of common acquaintances. But Opie also referred, though only in passing, to a research project that he and MacCallum had recently embarked upon. Writing in the careless shorthand of a busy research student, Opie did not take the time to spell out the theoretical implications of this work. But it was immediately clear to Farley that Opie and MacCallum were building on the findings of the Frenchman, Alphonse Laveran.

  This unexpected piece of news plunged Farley into a state of perplexity. As a student he had paid little attention to Laveran's work, assuming it to be generally discredited. In this he had taken his lead from no less a person than William Osler, the guiding spirit of Johns Hopkins, who had publicly declared his scepticism of 'Laveranity'. Farley had left for India fully confident that Laveran's theory was headed for medicine's vast graveyard of discredited speculations: his astonishment at the news of its disinterment could not have been greater.

  Once introduced, these apprehensions of Laveranity revivified gradually insinuated themselves into the young missionary's mind, creating doubt and disbelief where certainty had reigned before. As the days passed these doubts began to work on him in subtle and unexpected ways, evoking once again the life he had forsaken, giving rise to an overwhelming nostalgia for the half-forgotten habits and routines of the laboratory. He began to bitterly regret the impulse that had caused him to leave his own microscope behind, at his family's New England home, or else it would have been all too easy to set up an improvised laboratory right where he was.

  Then, by chance rather than design, he discovered, sandwiched within the pages of a prayerbook, the card of an English doctor, one Surgeon-Colonel Lawrie, of the Indian Medical Service. Farley had met Lawrie on one of his occasional visits to the Mission 's headquarters in Cal-

  cutta. In the course of their brief meeting, the SurgeonColonel had informed him that he was on his way to Hyderabad, to take up an appointment as Professor in the Medical School recently founded by the prince of that state, the nizam. Fortunately, he had scribbled his new address on the back of his card and Farley lost no time in addressing a letter to him, enquiring into the present state of opinion regarding Laveran's theories.

  He had not long to wait: to his great relief Colonel Lawrie wrote back within the month. But the letter, when he read it, only deepened his puzzlement: the Colonel still appeared to hold to the belief that Laveranity was without foundation.

  Despite the efforts of certain acolytes, wrote the Colonel, it remained true, so far as rational opinion could discern, that Laveran's speculations were wholly without empirical foundation. He himself had recently been witness to a spectacle that had produced forcible proof of this in a manner that would have been comic had it not so dramatically shamed its protagonist.

  A self-important and opinionated young army doctor, Ronald Ross had just been posted to the army hospital at Begumpett, not far from Hyderabad. Having more time on his hands than was good for him, Ross had taken it upon himself to begin an investigation into malaria – a disease of which he had no practical knowledge whatever. The young man had been overheard, not once but several times, at the Secunderabad Club, boasting of his familiarity with Laveran's chimera. Nor had he hesitated to accept an invitation to demonstrate the existence of this creature to the assembled faculty of the Nizam's School of Medicine. To this end, he had actually loaded some poor shivering unfortunate into a bullock cart and brought him rattling over to the School, eleven miles away. But of course when the time came, with everybody gathered in the lecture theatre, t
here was absolutely nothing to be found in the poor man's blood: not a trace of Laveran's fantastical creature. When asked for an explanation he had come up with some stuttering tale of how the creature had gone into temporary withdrawal: as though the parasite were a sleepy Latin in need of a daily siesta.

  As far as he, Surgeon-Colonel Lawrie, was concerned this contretemps put paid to the matter, once and for all. However, the Colonel went on to add, he understood very well that in these matters a man might want to make up his mind for himself. One of his colleagues in the Medical Service, D. D. Cunningham, FRS, a very sound man and a scientist of some distinction, had the charge of a laboratory, in Calcutta. Although not comparable to the leading laboratories of Europe or America, Cunningham's facilities were certainly the best in India, and possibly within the whole continent of Asia. Cunningham was no more persuaded of Laveran's theory than anyone else, but he was a fair-minded man, and would gladly allow his facilities to be used for a good cause. Should the Reverend Doctor so desire, he, Surgeon-Colonel Lawrie, would be glad to write a letter of introduction to Cunningham, etc., etc.

  Farley wrote immediately to Lawrie, accepting his offer, and it was soon arranged that he would visit Cunningham's laboratory on his next trip to the Mission 's Calcutta headquarters.

  Farley boarded the train in a state of feverish anticipation. His excitement was in no way diminished when he disembarked at Calcutta 's Sealdah Station three days later.

  Promptly at five, the next afternoon, Farley presented himself for tea, at Dr Cunningham's boarding house. Dr Cunningham proved to be a large man of florid complexion. He greeted Farley with booming goodwill, and enquired in some detail after the health and well-being of his erstwhile mentor W. S. Thayer, whose work he knew and evidently admired.

  They conversed for some time about general matters and it soon became clear to Farley that whatever his earlier accomplishments, Cunningham had long since lost interest in research. He was not entirely surprised when Cunningham told him that he was to retire some three years hence, and that with his future leisure in mind, he had been exploring the possibility of establishing a private practice in Calcutta.