by Mary Finn
“And yours are, where exactly, hinny?”
I looked at him miserably. Yes, he knew himself well, this man Carlen. He might store his information like knives but his real power was his silence. If I were to tell Mr Walker what he had done today, or before today, nothing would protect me from his silence. He knew I knew that.
“I’ll give you this ring. But please, you must tell me what you know. Only tell me what is true. Tell me some other thing so I can believe you.”
“So small a ring? That gets only a paper mother, not a living father.”
He took Miss Hickey’s tiny gold ring without a word and dropped it into one of his waistcoat pockets. The picture was safe in my hands when I thought how easily I might have arranged for Mr Walker to ask me to show it to him again, and have the theft discovered that way. But it is an easy thing to drop a paper, or tear it, perhaps, or step it underfoot into the mud and call it an accident. As Carlen had said, it was just a gamble, for him as well as for me. And, either way, the stakes were higher for me.
His eyes, so very blue, stayed on my face. Did he have the right way of it about my father’s eyes – that the left one was the green? What a thing to be sure of! I had to close my own and picture how my father used to hold me before I could say the same thing with certainty.
He knew what I was doing with my eyes shut, I swear it. He decided to throw me another line.
“Your father used to draw too. But not birds. Ship’s wheels and sails, roofs and riggings.”
Ship’s wheels?
I suddenly thought of my gold mohurs, stored at the bottom of the leather case, and wondered if he’d already found them. My heart jumped and fell back down. What else might I bargain with if he had?
“Where did you see my father? When? Is he in good health? Please tell me.”
Up front Hari squawked suddenly as our boat bumped hard against the bank, and then swung its broadside out again into the flow where a large boat was coming fast downriver. Benu dived off with a rope and scrambled through the reeds until he could stand up on the bank and pull us alongside, hauling the lead rope taut round the trunk of a chopped tree.
The boat was full of red-coated soldiers. Most of them were standing but a few were leaning over the prow. These ones whooped when they saw Benu’s brave jump and then, when they saw me, they shouted and pointed and called out like monkeys. I pulled my scarf up over my face and turned away and their noise passed downriver with them.
But in those few seconds Carlen was suddenly gone, as if he’d never been standing close beside me, never been dripping his poison into my ear, never defiling my poor dead mother.
Any other time his disappearance would have made me glad. That we could journey on without him, whatever it took, I’d begun to pray for that. But now! If what Carlen claimed was true, that he had seen my father, no matter when it was, or where, this was the only news anybody had ever brought of him.
I’d had two different lives since Papa had left us, one at Mr Bristol’s house, one with the Hickeys. How many lives had he had? Was he really, truly, still alive? All along I’d beaten that question away because it could be answered in two ways and I would accept only one of these. I needed to believe my father was out there in the world, just separated from me by a spell that would be lifted when I could work out how to do it.
Perhaps I should have been more faithful to my little Durga, as my mother had been all her life. Now Durga was rewarding my neglect by sending me Carlen as a guide. He was the last person I would have chosen but I needed him.
THE NEEM TREE
CARLEN WASN’T IN THE CABIN. He wasn’t on the riverbank. Nor in the water anywhere near the boat, which was as well, because he did not swim. Not in our Ganga at any rate. He said it was dirty. I knew too that he laughed at the small offerings of rice and fruit that Madan and Benu cast into the waters each morning before we set out.
Yet my gold mohurs were safe, still wrapped in the purple scarf at the bottom of my case, along with the peacock locket. Perhaps he’d been too pleased with what he’d found to poke further. All the birds were there too, and my box of paints and pencils was untouched. But I guessed that Carlen would not dare harm anything that concerned Mr Walker’s business.
Benu shouted that there was fish on the pan and he and Hari looked at me with surprise when I said I would prefer to take a walk instead, to look for birds. My mind couldn’t rest and the thought of food made my throat close over. I packed my notebook and pencils into my bag and left my slippers on deck for I thought the paddy fields would be all a-squelch.
“Will you be safe, Miss Anila?” Hari asked anxiously. “Perhaps there are snakes.”
“You have your pencils today?” Benu held up his fingers and pretended to count all the items I should have. “Your notebook? Your chalks?”
“And my eyes, Benu, two of them in working order.” I smiled at them. But where was Carlen? They hadn’t seen him go, they said.
The clay path was baked hard for the most part but at times my feet were sucked into patches of warm mud where water was coming through. Small brown frogs skipped out of danger as I put my toes down. I had never seen so many frogs but, for all the plenty, the paddy birds patrolling these muddy parts drew themselves up like temple guards as I passed. They saw only a robber.
I came level with a line of trees planted beside a little waterway. I was glad of the shade now for the sun was high, and even gladder to see that one of the trees had a clever arrangement of branches. It was a neem. Even here, away from Calcutta, there were friendly neems.
Climbing to the first fork was easy. On the next level of branches there was a hole in the trunk and outside it some soft tan downy feathers were sticking to the bark. I was tempted to put my hand inside but this winter season was the time for owl babies. Not even if these might be unknown owls for Mr Walker would I disturb them.
My tunic had streaks of green across it by the time I made it to the second lookout branch. I sat there with my right arm round the trunk and felt a little of what it must be to be a bird, cool, high up and scanning for its dinner.
Where were Madan and Mr Walker? I thought perhaps they had gone to look for a temple, one with the kind of paintings or statues Englishmen liked to look at. My mother told me that Mr Bristol’s friends used to make up hateful stories about these temple works, even about the goddesses themselves, though of course they did not understand the first thing of what they saw. But surely Mr Walker was not of their kind.
There was no sign of a temple anyway, no matter what direction I looked, just narrow stripes of water picking their way in lines across the flat green fields. I decided I would climb a little higher.
It made a difference, that extra little trip up into the sky. What I could see now was a huge square dug out among the fields, quite close to the main waterway that drained into the river. It looked like one of the city water tanks, deep and sunken, but we were in the countryside where tanks were small, like ponds. Nor did it seem to hold any water, but it glinted all the same, all along its bottom. It sparkled.
There were people inside the tank. I could count ten or more. Some were walking around, tiny stick figures I could just make out by squinting. Others were bent over like bandicoots, lifting and hauling.
I turned to look back at the river. There it was brown and strong, stretching ahead of our tied up boat, beginning to curve like a dagger. I could see another boatful of soldiers coming along.
I took a deep breath, preparing myself to twist round and climb down the tree when the astonishing thing happened.
Great brown wings arrived underneath me, out of nowhere it seemed, without even a flap. They were sails, sails come out of the sky, sails of feather and muscles, with all their power spread along the delicate tracery. They brought a draught with them, and a sharp smell of blood and water that rose up beyond my nose and into my eyes.
Only afterwards did I think that what I saw was like a fairy tale, like my mother’s kind of story, where
a giant bird, brave as Jatayu, arrives to work magic, to rescue somebody. But when it actually happened, the magic was all in the suddenness, the hugeness of the bird, and the thrill I felt all along my skin.
She had such a fine balance. Her huge claws gripped the edges of the nest hole and she made little shifts to her back and her head when she needed to reach in to her babies. Her wide wings were as smartly folded up as an umbrella in a shop. I knew the babies were feeding on what she had brought them, fish chewed up and dripping.
She was there only minutes and then she rose up again and glided away.
I sat back against the trunk and drew everything I could remember of her wings in flight and at rest. I wrote down my colours, the flashes of black and gold and white in all the brown. I made ten sketches. But my best one was the quickest one, which showed the mother bird’s round head bent back against her body, with just a little curve of owl cheek showing and her two long ears flattened into her head feathers.
Down along the water track three figures were moving away from the strange tank. One was thin, one was broad, one was fair. That much I could see, and that much told me who they were.
How had Carlen known to find the other two? Why had he rushed away as he did?
It was only a short walk back to the river and the boat, and I was sitting with my back against the tree trunk watching Hari and Benu play a silly game with the neem sticks I had brought back when the three men arrived. Mr Walker had a flushed face and a bite on his cheek that looked sore. Carlen did not look at any of us but went on board and started to unpack the tents.
“We did not mean to be gone so long,” Mr Walker said. “Did you find anything new to draw?”
Without saying anything I handed him the notebook. I watched his face as he took in exactly what it was I had done. He passed the drawings to Madan.
“Where did you do this work, Anila? How did you think of drawing the fish owl in this way, from above? These are intriguing pieces.”
I pointed at the neem tree in the distance.
“I climbed right to the top. I could see for miles. The nest was halfway up the tree and she came to feed them while I was there. It was the most wonderful thing I have ever seen, that pencha feeding her babies underneath me.”
Madan’s eyes were full of measurements as I sang this story out like a child.
“And what else did you see?” he asked. “Did you see the sahib and myself?”
“I saw all three of you. I saw a big tank like the Lal Dighi tank with people moving around inside it. And I saw two big boats with soldiers in them on the river but they went right past. I saw frogs too, lots of them, and paddy birds eating them as if they were fruit.”
I could hear my own voice, as if I were reciting a rhyme. Perhaps it was that silly way of speech that was making me think like a child too, for I truly had to bite my tongue to stop myself saying that the only thing I had not seen from the top of the neem tree was my father.
I stood up then and moved away, with everyone’s eyes on me. Carlen had my tent up so I went inside it and sat there, my knees up, my chest heaving. I felt like a fool. It was not my business what Mr Walker did when he left my company. I only wished he could help me find my father. It certainly was not his fault that he could not. Worst of all, Carlen had seen me behave like a spoilt child.
It was dark outside when I heard Mr Walker’s polite cough outside the tent.
“Anila, will you come down the river path a little way with me?”
The little slice of moon was high in the sky and we could see quite well as we walked. I saw three figures wrapped up in the cabin. But Carlen had laid his bedding outside on the deck away from the others. I fancied that his light eyes followed us down the path, warning me not to tell tales on him.
“Anila, are you vexed with me?”
I shook my head. But he waited for a proper answer.
“No, Mr Walker. How could I be? You are always kind and thoughtful.”
“But something has upset you today, am I right?”
I could say something that was true, at least.
“I keep dreaming about my father. He shrinks and shrinks until he disappears.”
Mr Walker tut-tutted at that.
“Och, that is a hateful thing. But it means nothing, such a dream, you know, except that finding your father is your principal care and so it preys on your mind. Only the likes of our murdering old King Macbeth would have dreams that tell the future, not good people like you, Anila. And his dreams were only a story anyway.”
He stopped walking and faced me.
“I know you must think I deserted you today, and without a word, too. But I simply did not wish to put you in possession of uncomfortable knowledge.”
If he only knew.
“You know I have official business here, Anila. And you know I have my passion for the birds, to discover what I may of them. But since I came here I have discovered other things about India. I have found out that the Company, the English, whatever we call ourselves here, are committing an evil deed in Bengal and probably all over.”
The evil was all about salt.
“Everybody needs salt, Anila, birds, animals, humans. Especially in a hot country where we all sweat in the heat and lose our own salt. When salt leaves your body you must find more or you will die. Or at very least you will get sick, even if you have food and water. And it is the little ones who die first.”
The Company was making huge profits from making and selling salt, he said. Nobody else was allowed to do this, on pain of death, and the salt prices were high even in a famine year, when crops were poor.
“What you saw today was an outlaw salt depot. Madan’s cousin maintains it. He collects and sells the salt that people manufacture further down the river. His price is fair, his risk is immense.”
“But all I saw was a tank in the ground!”
“Yes, for it’s easy to disguise that way with vegetation, and the beauty of it is you would have to be an owl to know it was even there. Unless you were a tree-climbing species like a certain Anila Tandy, of course.”
I did not smile at that so he continued.
“Do you know that it was Carlen who first found out about this business? It was when he came to hire our boat that he heard the men talking. Until this trip I did not know that Carlen had any knowledge of Bangla but he does. Knowing my concerns, he instructed me as to what questions I should put to Madan. I have Madan’s trust now, I am proud to say. He understands that I want to do something about the matter. He told me about the river salt trade and the men told me of the dangers they run. My intention now is to raise the question of the tax when I return to England.”
And Carlen, good and brave Carlen, had rushed away to warn his master that soldiers were passing by on the river. This Carlen who had read out my Bangla words as if they were monkey language.
“But I thought that Carlen… well, he mocks Madan and our religion, and I cannot think he cares about the welfare of poor people in Bengal.”
I was afraid to say more.
Mr Walker sighed.
“Carlen is a strange mixture of a man. He saved my life the year I came down to England as a troubled young man inclined to brawl, and he has been in and out of my life since then, as suits both of us. He often pretends to be what he is not but I cannot say why such is his way. He has many masks and some of them are unpleasant.”
Then he looked at me as sharply as he could in the darkness.
“He has not been disrespectful to you, I hope, Anila?”
For a long time, I could not think what to answer.
“Anila?”
“He does not seem to like me, so I find it difficult. That is all.”
“For that would be unpardonable and I would not pardon it. Do you understand me?”
I nodded. That was some knowledge to bank indeed. But I thought to myself that my gold mohurs were the best hope I had of making Carlen tell me what I needed to know.
ALCHEMY
Mr Bristol was curious to inspect the arrangements for making the painting, I knew that. But it was also true that he never missed an opportunity to inspect other people’s houses, their furniture and rugs, pictures and silver.
Now, as we jogged along, he told us more about the other gentleman’s portrait of his bibi, the beautiful one that had spurred him to have my mother’s likeness painted by the same hand.
“She cannot hold a candle to you, my dear Anna, though it cannot be denied that she is very fine and her champion is a noisy fellow around the city. Why, it would be criminal not to have your worth known similarly, no matter the cost to me.”
My mother shifted along the padded seat, a little closer to me, and sighed. She was wearing his choice of clothes that day, of course, but nobody could deny that he had a good eye for an outfit.
Her sari was a very fine green China silk. Mr Bristol claimed it was the very green of the mulberry leaves that gave birth to silk itself. Underneath the sari she wore a jacket of peacock green, crafted by the lady from Kashi, and there was a matching jade insert in the circlet that bound her hair. Her fingernails and toenails were polished with a lustre coating. Round her neck was a string of tiny river pearls and her earrings were dainty leaf shapes of fine filigree silver.
Of course Mr Bristol had not said a word about anything as lowly as feet but that morning my mother had sat patiently on our bed while I carefully traced a design of feathers on her soles with red alta paint.
“They won’t know any better about such things, but you and I do,” she’d said.
Our ride was so long that Mr Bristol began to huff and puff that he had not hired a boat instead. But at last we found ourselves rattling past spacious houses, each one set down in a garden of great size.
