Ghote had begun to chafe as this long Bengali introduction pushed further and further away any indication of what it was that he could do. But now he felt a sudden jab of despair.
Had this bhadrolok fellow summoned them to this posh, posh club just only to make them believe once more that they should do nothing?
But evidently, however much as a guest he was doing his best not to show his feelings, Mr Bhattacharya had sensed he was unhappy.
‘My dear fellow, I have digressed. It was wrong of me. But I will allow myself no further licence. The fact is: I have to tell you, brutally I am afraid, that you have been grossly misinformed.'
So I am right. He is saying forget.
But Protima had jumped in.
‘Misinformed? Misinformed? Who has dared?'
‘One,' Mr Bhattacharya answered, unperturbed, ‘whose name you said, if I remember rightly, was P. V. Bagchi.'
‘Office Superintendent, Land Ownership Section, Writers' Building,' Ghote tapped in. ‘But, please, how was such an office-holder misinforming?'
‘His legal knowledge does not appear to be as reliable as one might expect,' Mr Bhattacharya replied. ‘An hour spent in the library here has made me rather better acquainted with the facts. Let me tell you that there is no such thing in our law as the right of passage your P. V. Bagchi was leading you to believe existed.'
‘But we were seeing those words— My husband was seeing.’ Protima swung round to Ghote. ‘Or were you making some mistake. You duffer.'
‘No, no,’ Mr Bhattacharya intervened. ‘I assure you, my dear lady, your husband almost certainly saw those words. But, I think I am right in hazarding the guess, that the document which that deplorable fellow Dutt-Dastar was reading from, or even appearing to read from - that document he was so careful not to let you have full sight of - must have been something like a memorandum compiled by himself for the use of his principal. His principal, I must say, in what does begin to look like a scandal of some proportions. The reason that phrase right of passage was there, I have come to believe, was to state to this principal the importance of securing passage one way or another through, my dear Mrs Ghote, the compound of the house you have inherited from my good friend Amit Chattopadhyay. And, yes, I have used the words a scandal of some proportions not without weighing them.'
‘Then,' Ghote said, grasping the situation, ‘Mr Dutt-Dastar has been so concerned to persuade my wife to sell the house in order that some gentleman - and I am wondering will we ever discover who it is - can drive a road through and out to the wetlands where it is proposed to make a valuable new colony.'
‘So it would seem.'
For once Mr Bhattacharya’s Bengali verbosity had deserted him. Ghote saw it as a tribute to the seriousness of the illegal activity it seemed they had touched now with more than fingertips.
And who was this principal Mr Bhattacharya had seen as lying behind what he had labelled a scandal of some proportions? No telling, of course. But it must be someone of influence. Much influence.
He felt a shiver of apprehension run up his spine.
Now their waiter approached again, holding rocksteady a large silver platter.
'Ah,' Mr Bhattacharya exclaimed. 'Now here is a custom of the Bengal Club that I fear I must explain to you. A custom established, I would venture to guess, in the full flush of the British days, and preserved by tradition ever since. Between the first course at luncheon here and the fish, which you, my dear madam, as a true Bengali must be looking forward to, we always have served, irrespective of what has gone before, irrespective of what is to come after - and let me reassure you, Mr Ghote, you will not be subjected to fish unless you have already become a Bengali addict -an omelette. I am sure you will find them delicious.'
Back to Bengali talkativeness once more, Ghote noted. It seemed even the looming scandal could not put a cap on that spouting fountain. Or was it perhaps that the elderly bhadrolok could not for long bring himself fully to face the ominous truth?
The waiter placing a small, perfectly cooked omelette on each of their fresh plates, asked Mr Bhattacharya if all was satisfactory and then bore off his huge platter to other tables.
'So, sir,' Ghote said firmly, looking at Mr Bhattacharya with some anxiety, 'what are we to do now?'
'Ah, what is to be done next is the question I contrived to bring up at the adda I became part of last night. Mind you, I never referred to specific matters. Wholly a case of if for instance one happened to .. .'
'And what was decided?' Ghote shot out, forking up a mouthful of omelette.
Mr Bhattacharya smiled.
'My dear fellow, it is plain you have never taken part in a Calcutta adda. A decision is the last thing ever to be arrived at. No, the point of it is the talk itself.'
'But what of use is that?'
Ghote knew the moment the words, bitterly expressed, had exploded from him that he should not have said them.
But Mr Bhattacharya did not take exception.
'Yes,' he said, 'I know what you must feel, my dear chap. I know what anyone not bred and born a Bengali must feel about our genius for talk - I claim that word genius - and our severe lack of talent for action. Nevertheless I would suggest that quantities of talk are not after all such a bad thing. All right, one leaves an adda with one's head full of contradictory notions. You might say that no decision could arise from them. But those contradictory notions are there in one's head, and, you know, sometimes, not always but sometimes, after they have swirled about there for a little, all of them, they come to form a pattern. And in the end one does have the wherewithal to make a decision.'
Ghote found he was thinking.
After a moment or two he noticed that he had the last mouthful of omelette poised on his fork in front of him, and it was slowly slipping off. Hastily he transferred the pale yellow morsel to his mouth.
He swallowed. And spoke.
'Yes. Yes, I see that the Bengali way may have some advantages.'
Mr Bhattacharya smiled once more.
'So,' Ghote said, 'what pattern was at last forming inside your head? Or has that final outcome not yet been reached?'
'Oh, yes, my dear fellow, the pattern has formed. I ave come to a conclusion.'
Chapter Ten
Mr Bhattacharya sat there at the Bengal Club's white-clothed, silver-laden table looking pleased with himself.
Bhadrolok, Ghote thought, all his prejudices - only just shifted by what Mr Bhattacharya had said about the advantages of the adda - coming swirling back.
'Yes indeed, my dear chap, the pattern formed. All the gossip, speculation and, yes, mere chatter of last night's talk over our little supper of hilsa roe in lemon juice, with a litre or two of Starka to accompany it, shifted and cleared in my head. And then I saw the answer to my seemingly casual inquiry about what to do in circumstances parallel to your own, my dear Ghote, Mrs Ghote. It was, yes, to go unofficially, unofficially mind, to a very senior policeman. I regret to say that perhaps an official approach might fail of its intent. If this business will in the end benefit some person high within the West Bengal Government, and, however far beyond any corruption our exemplary Chief Minister is, one must take into account the fact that such people occasionally have what they are inclined to call good friends in the police. High-rank officers, to put it bluntly, whom they can bribe - if not with money then with good postings and advancement - to turn a Nelson's eye to their misdoings. However, one of the people I was talking to here at the club happens to be connected by marriage, or rather in our bhadrolok way by various linked marriages, to a certain senior police officer whom he is happy enough to vouch for.'
Ghote checked an impulse to pounce. He wanted to jab out What is the name of this senior officer? Who he is? 'When can I see?
But he had come to realize that this was not the way to go about it with an old bhadrolok like Mr Bhattacharya.
‘Yes,' Mr Bhattacharya went on. 'That, of all the suggestions made, whether seriously or in a somewhat ban
tering tone, was the one that seemed to me, by as it were the light of day, to be the answer. But, remember, it was by no means the only contestant jockeying, like one of those fellows crouching on the back of a horse at our celebrated racecourse, to come to the forefront of my mind. And some of those contestants, those riders as you may say, those suggestions, were not without merit. There was, for instance, a remark made by the editor, in fact, of one of Calcutta's premier journals. And take careful note of what he put forward. Not that his own newspaper should send some sharp-nosed reporter to hunt around what little we know of this scandal. No. His notion was - and I thought it a good one, and a credit also to its proponent - that one should discreetly draw the attention of The Sentinel to the business. You know The Sentinel, my dear fellow?'
'No,' Ghote answered, once again refraining from saying something like If you think going to this senior police officer is a better way, then for God's sake let me have his name.
But Protima was not going to let anything to the credit of Calcutta go unpraised.
'The Sentinel,' she said. ‘Really you should be knowing it. It is the foremost crusading paper of India, one knocking into very much a cocked hat Bombay's old Blitz or anything else. More corruption exposed than anywhere else in the world.'
‘Well,' Mr Bhattacharya intervened, ‘perhaps that is going a little far. But it is true to say that The Sentinel has more than once tackled corruption issues that no other newspaper in this city of a hundred newspapers liked to touch. However, excellent though that suggestion was, it was cried down by all and sundry at the little adda I put your case to, my dear chap. If this business is as much a serious affair as you are saying, Bhattacharya Babu, they were telling me, then The Sentinel has not got the weight for it. It lacks the ability finally to persist. Eventually with The Sentinel it comes down to Why quarrel with the crocodile when you share the pond, as our Bengali saying has it. And there was another case made by my friends over that lemon-doused hilsa roe. A case, I must confess, that much impressed me. It went something like this: it is evident that the person you have cited, or invented, has by chance caught a whiff of what must be a truly major piece of corruption, but should he thoughtlessly pursue that, regardless of what may happen? And the answer some of my fellow participants at our adda put forward was that the fellow whose case I had put to discussion would be very well advised to say to himself that there is nothing he can do. That, in short, he should leave well alone. Or, in this instance, leave ill alone. But in the end I thought that particular proposal, though there was much to be said for it, was, well, perhaps premature.'
And now Ghote could no longer holdback the question that had been boiling and bubbling in his head.
'Sir, who is it that I must go to?'
'Ah, the man of action. I must not forget, my dear chap, that you are not simply the Bombay jamai of your Bengali wife but a detective officer, a bringer of criminals to swift justice. So, let me tell you. The man you should see, and indeed the man I have already arranged for you to see - we Bengalis are not always all talk, you know - is one Assistant Commissioner Bhowmick. He is not directly concerned with fraud and corruption, you understand. He is, in fact, I gather, one of those responsible for attempting to do something about our traffic problems - the worst in India, you know, by far the worst - and he has a fine reputation for curbing the incessant bribe-taking of the traffic police, their demands, too, for free snacks and cups of tea or paans from paan-stalls. So the heart evidently in the right place. And my informant spoke very highly of him. A cousin of his, or the cousin of a cousin, something of that sort. Do let me know eventually if I have found you the right chap.'
'Assistant Commissioner Bhowmick,' Ghote repeated. 'And at what time am I to see?'
'Ah, you think you'll be with him in half an hour, eh? You tiger. But, no. No, I'm afraid I have not been able to arrange anything before the day after tomorrow. Always best, I think, not to give the impression of wanting anything too urgently. I have always found you get what you ask for much more certainly in that way. Yes, go roundabout. Roundabout. That at least is my way, the Calcutta way, you might say.'
'Yes, sir,' Ghote said. 'Good advice.'
But he hardly meant it.
Ghote declined, with firmness, to do any sightseeing during the period of nearly forty-eight hours before his appointment with Assistant Commissioner Bhowmick. He found he was filled with a not unpleasant feeling that matters were for the moment out of his hands. There was nothing for him to do until he met Assistant Commissioner Bhowmick about the dark business that had risen up on him.
No need just now to put my shoulder to the wheel, he said to himself. Sit idle and wait only till I am seeing that man.
He had expected Protima to insist on more trips round Calcutta. But to his surprise she accepted his very first attempt at rejecting both the Victoria Memorial and the Botanical Gardens.
'If you are doing nothing to be making sure I would get my house,' she said. 'I will go once more to Kalighat Temple. Perhaps I have too long neglected Goddess Kali while I was staying in Bombay. Perhaps she is teaching me by all this trouble-bubble one sharp lesson.'
Or perhaps, Ghote thought wickedly, you have not yet read enough of the next pages in your guidebook.
But when she said she ought to go first to the bazaar at the Armenian Ghat to buy flowers for the goddess, he volunteered at least to accompany her there. If he had his anti-priestcraft principles, he was prepared for his wife's sake to go to the very edge of them.
He felt when they got to the riverside bazaar under the shadow of the giant latticework of the Howrah Bridge that his loyalty was being rewarded. The whole tumbledown wharf - there since Calcutta's long-ago commercial heyday - was a sight to see. A great mass of flowers of every variety and colour, baskets piled with ropes of jasmine and tuberoses, huge gunnysacks of dazzling yellow sunflowers and, as dazzling, orange marigolds placed in the water at the river's edge. Yellow, blue, purple and bright red hibiscus, flowers of every shape and colour, far more than he was able to name, joyously assaulted his senses. Everywhere the scents of them, heavy and almost intoxicating, invaded his nostrils. The air all round was almost yellow with the clouds of pollen, overpowering even the city's everpresent dust. His spirits took a great upward leap.
Yes, there were flower markets in Bombay and in every city in India. But this seemed, if only because of the laughter-filled shouts of the hundreds of vendors, somehow more exulting, more passionate, more life-loving than any other. It outdid them all.
I think, he found himself saying inwardly, I think perhaps I really could like to live in this place.
His delight scarcely faded as Protima went endlessly from vendor to vendor, making up her mind, unmaking it, deciding for, deciding against. But this, too, he told himself, is part and parcel of Calcutta life. I could get to go along with even this.
Perhaps.
By the time Protima had made her purchase, a crimson garland of hibiscus, the morning bazaar was drawing to its close. Basket after basket of unsold blooms were being carried down to the water's edge and tumbled out in front of a gathering of wandering cows, evidently regular visitors, for them to plunge their noses into their fragrant meal.
Putting Protima into a taxi for the Kalighat Tfemple, he made his way slowly and thoughtfully back to the Fairlawn Hotel.
Calcutta? Do I like it, or do I hate it? All this passion and excitement, is it for me or is it one hundred per cent too much? Protima, my Bengali wife, do I want to throw in my lot with her? Or will I, if I stay here, never be truly contented?
He had come to no decision before he found himself under the wide arch with its green, yellow-edged letters, Fairlawn Hotel. Sighing in puzzlement, he climbed the stairs to their room. There he could think of nothing better to do than stare for most of the rest of the day out of the window from which on their first evening in the city they had watched the last throes of the Laxmi Puja, bright rocket trails red and gold against the moonlit sky. He found a
source of unaccountable interest - When I am meeting Assistant Commissioner Bhowmick how much will he help? - in the huge garbage pile he could see through the all-pervasive drifting dust in the lane below.
It was subject, he found, to constant change. Mostly this came from the ever-arriving additions to it. There seemed never to be any major subtractions, no Corporation carts arriving to shovel anything away.
Instead people from the tumbledown houses and the shacks nearby constantly came with the scraps they could not finally eat, with objects that disrepair had made totally impossible to use, with the dangling bodies of dead cats. From the start there had been, too, an especially putrid reek, every now and again sharply tickling his nostrils as a puff of breeze moved along the lane. It was coming, he eventually realized, from the corpse, in the last stages of decay, of a large dog.
He wondered whether it would stay where it was on one side of the huge heap until it at last disintegrated altogether. Or would some Corporation worker eventually arrive to smother it or even remove it.
There were minor removals, however. But not conducted by any human agency. And there was a strict order among the removers. First on the scene, but first too to be scared from it, were the crows, hopping and pecking. Soon they yielded to a pair of cats, lean and mangy but alive. They in turn were succeeded by a rootling black pig. A single growling and snapping pi-dog chased away the pig, and finally a wandering bull came charging at the shoulder-high heap with wild swings of its heavy head and, once all opposition was chased away, turned to and tore from the mouldering pile whatever suited its appetite.
Bribery, Corruption Also Page 9
