The Sleeping Dictionary

by Sujata Massey

  “I’ll never trust Indian soldiers to fight for us. Remember the mutiny?” Mr. Weatherington, who had passed under my ceiling viewing hole, slapped his hand on the desk, right in front of where Mr. Lewes was sitting. “We must concentrate our efforts on tracing the Fifth Column and locking them up.”

  “And now that the Germans are imprisoned; who are these supposed Fifth Columnists?” Mr. Lewes countered. “You can’t lock up innocent people just because they feel differently about politics. Remember what happened in the Andamans? We wound up letting them go.”

  “A situation I hold you responsible for, after the so-called human rights reports you made.” Mr. Weatherington made a snorting sound. “Don’t sulk, Simon. You got an ICE for it: you, the governor’s fair-haired boy.”

  Mr. Lewes was not blond; he was dark. But I knew what the English slang expression meant. It was that he was favored by authority.

  And ICE meant companion of the Indian Empire, and was granted by the king each year to a select group of administrators in the ICS and military. I was stunned that the British government would have given out an honor relating to shutting down the Andamans prison—and could Mr. Lewes really have helped? That conversation gave me the impression that Mr. Lewes was not wholly against Indian independence. But I wondered about the freedom-fighting group called the Fifth Column.

  The next morning, I wrote to Pankaj requesting a meeting to discuss these new developments. I placed the note under the paper lining in a box of candy and asked Kantu the newsboy to take it to 27 Lower Circular Road. In the afternoon, Kantu returned with a different package from Pankaj. Hidden under the box’s lining was a request asking me to come to the Minerva Theatre for the following day’s first matinee showing.

  I dressed carefully the next day in a lovely green-and-gold sari and went to the cinema, buying a single seat in the upstairs balcony. After the first half hour of Achhut Kanya, I slipped out to the hallway where Pankaj was already standing in a dark recess. How my pulse raced to see him waiting there; waiting for me.

  “I have some governors’ reports for you to read,” I said, handing him what I’d translated into Bengali. “But first, I must tell you what I overheard him talking about with his ICS colleague Wilbur Weatherington. They were speaking about the Fifth Column. Do you know of this freedom-fighting group?”

  Pankaj grimaced, and I realized I should not have said the name Weatherington aloud but instead used W. “They are talking about Nazi sympathizers who are waiting here, ready to help. Did they speak any names of people they suspect? They could face automatic imprisonment under the war rules.”

  “I have not heard any specific names. The conversation became an argument in which L said to W that he wished Churchill hadn’t spoken against Indian freedom; he thought that it would hurt military recruitment. And W then accused L of ensuring the Andamans prisoners’ release. You were in the Andamans when the hunger strikers were released. Do you know anything about why the release came?”

  “I was in solitary confinement; if L was there, I didn’t know it. But I wouldn’t believe that he did anything to change the situation. The ICE is given for service to the empire.”

  I wanted to know more about the Fifth Column, but I couldn’t continue speaking because a second couple came out to the lobby.

  Shooting a look at them and then at me, Pankaj murmured, “We should go back to our seats.”

  “You do that,” I said, feeling self-conscious. “I can leave the theater now.”

  “If you did so, the ticket agents would notice. Take your seat again, and I’ll take mine.”

  I found a different empty seat, and he came in a bit later and sat three rows ahead. Under the straight, white beam that shot from the back of the theater, I could still see him.

  In the darkened cinema, the brilliant screen showed the Bengali actress Devika Rani captivating her handsome costar, Ashok Kumar. But I had no eyes for them. All I could do was look at the fine, intelligent head of Pankaj, the Calcutta gentleman who had gone to prison for his ideals and now was making his career defending Indians arrested for sedition. Dearest Pankaj, who had been charmed by my letters and treated me like a gentlewoman! Every meeting we had made me feel closer to him. I was becoming the kind of romantic Supriya Sen would laugh at; not at all the way a female freedom fighter should be.

  I’D BELIEVED MR. Lewes was too busy looking for Fifth Columnists and Germans to be paying much attention to Netaji and the Forward Bloc. We no longer spent long hours talking about the local news, or even as much time together at all. This change made me uneasy, as if perhaps the feelings he had for me had vanished, or new suspicions had arisen.

  It was up to me to improve our connection. One evening, I overheard him speak the name Bose on the telephone. I imagined he was conversing with Mr. Weatherington, who would never use the admiring Hindi word Netaji, just as neither of them used Mahatma or Gandhiji when speaking of Mohandas Gandhi.

  I went to my room, brushed my hair, and lightly made up my eyes and mouth, the way I had for the cocktail party. Thus fortified, I came back down and asked if he had time for a drink in the garden.

  “Yes, that’s just what I need!” he said, his eyes warming as he looked at me. “I’ve had quite a day.”

  “Good or bad?” I asked as we stepped down from the veranda together into the garden.

  “That depends on your perspective,” he said with an odd half smile. “Subhas Bose is in prison.”

  It was all I could do to keep from gasping. Netaji in prison? It would paralyze India’s independence movement. I sank down on to one of the teak chairs and asked how the arrest had happened.

  “He and his friends were caught on the way to tear down the Holwell Monument in Dalhousie Square. They had all manner of irons and lathis with them.” His voice was neutral, as if he had no idea how this news upset me.

  The Holwell Monument was not anything Indians treasured. The government had erected the fifty-foot obelisk after the Black Hole incident of 1756 to commemorate a short-lived revolt of the nawab of Bengal’s men against the East India Company. The violence resulted in an unknown number of British captives dying of heat exhaustion in a prison cell before the nawab was defeated. The monument was a visible reminder to Indians that sedition was unforgivable.

  “You said that Mr. Bose was on his way to Holwell,” I repeated, because something about the account struck me as odd. “How did the police know where he was going if he hadn’t arrived there yet?”

  Mr. Lewes hesitated, as if my question had surprised him. “He was quite nearby. And he and his men had lathis and some other tools with them.”

  “But they had not even touched the monument.” I seized on the point he was ignoring. “Could the criminal accusation have been created by the police as an excuse for arrest?”

  At my words, Mr. Lewes pressed his lips together. “The police didn’t put the tools in his hands; he did that himself. But the city’s safer with Bose unable to raise public sentiment against the war. Imagine if the Germans or Japanese invaded and he made a call for everyone to support them!”

  He was very good at twisting arguments. I longed to put better ideas in his mind in order to sway his colleagues in the government. Remembering that he had spoken several times as if he believed Indian freedom was sure to come, I said, “Have you ever thought that if India was immediately granted independence, all these internal security risks would evaporate? There would be only goodwill from Indians toward the British.”

  Mr. Lewes gave a short, incredulous laugh. “You talk about risks evaporating. How can that be, when we would all be gone, including the military?”

  I protested, “There are plenty of Indian soldiers who already know the work—”

  “The experienced British officers who’ve been leading the Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force for decades would all be let go. In their place, a fledgling, all-Indian army would have to hit the ground running. Could they successfully protect you and me and everyone else?” The
hesitation that had been in Mr. Lewes’s voice before was gone; he spoke rapidly, waving his hands to emphasize his point. “Absolutely not.”

  I settled back in the chair, wishing I could oppose him with more conviction. “You speak as if Japan or Germany is planning to attack India. We have no indication that that’s true.”

  “Absolutely they want India; if those two countries aligned, we could very easily be lost. I’m certain that war will come here. And if we don’t stand up to fight, there will be nothing left for our children.”

  Our children? Surely it was figurative language that Mr. Lewes was using, but the way he was looking at me, it seemed like something else.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “You have the right to a different opinion.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” I replied, trying to shake the mood that had swept over like a sudden cloud of rain. I could never have any more children. And he could not fight fairly. These were the only things to keep in mind.

  THROUGHOUT THAT FALL and winter of 1940, I lived with my ear at the spy hole, trying to gather news about the government’s intentions toward the imprisoned Netaji. Mr. Weatherington continued to visit one or two evenings a week. In the desk drawer, I found carbon copies of letters from Netaji to the Bengal home minister, Mr. Nazimuddin, revealing that Netaji had started a hunger strike. The hunger strike had saved the Andamans prisoners; but as weeks passed, nothing in Netaji’s situation changed, except his letters took on the tone of a man resigned to dying. I told Pankaj about it, and he was just as worried as me but said that for Netaji to begin eating would show capitulation. It was a game of wills, and he was certain Netaji was intelligent enough to win.

  Netaji’s trial was scheduled for early December, but the prison doctor declared he was too weakened by the hunger strike to stand before the judge. A new trial date was announced for a few weeks hence, but he remained in such wretched condition that the doctor again forbade the trial and shifted the famous patient to the Calcutta Medical College Hospital.

  The suspense was overpowering: many nights I lay awake, worrying whether Netaji would survive. And then, a few weeks before Christmas, the situation took a stunning turn. Netaji was taken by ambulance from the hospital to recuperate in his parents’ home. From listening to Mr. Lewes and Mr. Weatherington’s conversations, I learned that the provincial government feared if Netaji died while in police custody, riots would sweep Calcutta and possibly the whole country.

  “Come with us to a get-well rally outside Netaji’s home,” Supriya urged when I was having lunch with them one day. “People will chant prayers of support in order to irritate the police who are constantly watching the place.”

  “I wish I could, but I can’t jeopardize my job.” I’d already told Supriya that Mr. Lewes worked for the government but had carefully left out what exactly he did. The only one I trusted to know about that part was Pankaj.

  “How will Mr. Lewes know?” my friend protested. “You have gone to many political meetings without dire consequence. Ruksana wore a burka and transported two guns underneath it last week for the Strength Brigade.”

  At this, I felt myself stiffen. “Why do they need guns?”

  “Self-defense against the police, of course!”

  “Does Pankaj-da encourage this?” I remembered his telling the Chhatri Sangha group that he worked as counsel to the Strength Brigade and other freedom fighters. Not as a fighter himself.

  “No, but—” She paused. “You look like you’re about to cry! What is it about Pankaj that has made you so upset?”

  Flustered, I said, “I only asked what he thought.”

  “And he was asking about your family and where you came from. I did not tell him a thing!” Supriya said dramatically.

  “He should ask me those things himself.” I wondered whether Pankaj was investigating me for reasons of politics or because he shared my yearning.

  “How would Pankaj have a chance to ask you questions?” Supriya persisted. “Have you seen him outside our group?”

  I felt stymied, not wishing to lie to such a good friend. “I noticed him at the cinema once and said hello.”

  “Who was he with?”

  “Some fellow! We weren’t introduced,” I said. “Why so many questions? Is Pankaj Bandopadhyay always on your mind?”

  “Goodness, no.” Supriya’s hands flew to her face. “What I care about is freedom! Speaking of which, there is a Chhatri Sangha meeting tomorrow afternoon right here! At least come to that.”

  By now I knew Chhatri Sangha was on the list of suspicious organizations watched by the government. I couldn’t possibly risk Mr. Pal or someone similar lurking nearby and telling Mr. Lewes I’d been there.

  “I shouldn’t do that, either,” I said, watching Supriya’s face fall. “It’s a watched organization.”

  Supriya looked at me ruefully. “I understand. Your job could be lost, isn’t it?”

  Feeling embarrassed, I reached into my purse and gave her the remainder of the last month’s salary that I’d planned to bring to the bank. “Yes. I’m so very sorry to miss it. But you can give this for me.”

  “What a packet!” Supriya looked at the thirty rupees in awe. “How shall I say you’d like them to be spent?”

  I thought for a moment and then said, “Words are what will win our struggle. You could suggest they put the money toward paper and ink.”

  IT WAS A very different Christmas from the previous year’s. Mr. Lewes didn’t go to Bombay this time, wanting to conserve money. Still, he asked me to arrange for a Christmas meal. At a Chinese market in Bow Bazar, Manik found a duck and roasted it; Mr. Lewes pronounced it delicious, but its tough, oily meat stuck in my throat.

  Because he still gave everyone their bonuses, I went about my usual business of giving small, useful presents to Manik, Shombhu, Choton, and Jatin, and wrapped up for Mr. Lewes a trio of mango chutneys that I’d made earlier in the year, remembering that I couldn’t spend money on him. He thanked me profusely, and the next morning, on Boxing Day, a gift box appeared outside my bedroom door. Inside was a plum silk sari with a gold border, and enough matching fabric to make a blouse.

  As the smooth, obviously foreign-milled fabric slipped through my fingers, I felt patronized by the expense of the gift and embarrassed to have such a luxury. Because commercial sea traffic had stopped, the shops were empty of imported clothes and toys. I knew the situation in Europe was absolutely bleak, with bombings and shootings and families torn apart. They were probably not even thinking about Christmas goods, just everyone’s safety. And in Asia, it was even more frightening, because it was close, and the Japanese had seized Korea and China. The stories about the brutal murders of civilians and the raping of women and children gave me nightmares; one night I even dreamed the Japanese came to India and were looking for Kabita. It brought memories of what had happened in the brothel that I’d thought were suppressed, but were in fact always there, waiting.

  IN THE SECOND week of January, when I came downstairs for breakfast, I was surprised to see that the newspapers hadn’t yet arrived. After I was done, I walked to the newsstand. Kantu was working alongside his father, handing out newspapers to a long queue of customers.

  “Why didn’t you deliver to our flat today?” I asked him when I finally reached the busy counter.

  “Netaji has vanished; everyone wants to read about it! The newspapers were delayed getting to us, and then these people came.” He gestured toward the crowd. “All the Bengali papers are sold out, but you can have the English one.”

  I walked away, my head bent over the Statesman. The account confirmed what Kantu had said about Netaji no longer being at home. But what an exciting, mysterious story! Apparently Netaji had told his family weeks earlier that he wanted seclusion in his bedchambers in order to meditate. A curtain had been put up around his bed so that nobody could observe or trouble him. His meals were left just outside the curtain. All the time the plates came back empty, his family believed he was keeping well.
But then one supper tray stood untouched. His worried mother drew back the curtains to find his bed empty.

  Mr. Lewes was already at his office. I imagined he was hearing the news there, if he hadn’t heard already. Book sorting could wait. I tucked the paper under my arm and took a tram to the Sens’. Of course they already knew; in celebration, Mrs. Sen served everyone sweets. After wolfing down several shondesh, her son, Nishan, jumped around the room shouting Jai Hind, the freedom-fighting call.

  “Our Netaji outfoxed the police. It’s unbelievable because constables were posted on both corners of his house, night and day!” Supriya was beaming.

  “Maybe he’s still inside the house, hiding somewhere.” I could not imagine he would be safe anywhere in Calcutta.

  “Impossible; his mother would have found him!” Mrs. Sen interrupted. “It can only be that he wore a disguise to pass by the police and escape the country.”

  “Do you really think he’s gone away?” I felt oddly anxious. “He’s not the kind to desert us and the freedom struggle.”

  “The struggle isn’t over!” Supriya squeezed my hand in reassurance. “He will fight for us from abroad. The trick will be getting to Europe. He can’t possibly have made it yet.”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking. “No ships are traveling the seas, except for military ones, and they are unlikely to provide him passage!”

  “He cannot go by water, then,” Mrs. Sen opined. “It must be by land. Nishan, fetch your globe. We will dream up a route!”

  THE SENS WERE not the only ones imagining Netaji’s travel itinerary. In the days that followed, Mr. Lewes and Mr. Weatherington spent many late nights discussing the escape. Their theories were quite different: Mr. Weatherington suspected Netaji had hidden on a fishing boat and was sailing for Japan. Mr. Lewes guessed he had been carried by tribal people into the snowy hills of Darjeeling, and from there would trek into Nepal and then China. But both were proved wrong when British intelligence sent the Bengal government a copy of a decoded Italian telegram reporting that Netaji had reached Kabul, Afghanistan. He was believed to be hiding there while he plotted a route to Europe.