CHAPTER 8
How Amit Went to Calcutta
1.
At the school where Amit taught, there was a new teacher. He was a man in early middle age called Khadim Hussain. He was said to be an English master although, as far as Amit knew, no English master had left and none needed replacing.
The headmaster, Mr D. B. Chakravarty, introduced Khadim Hussain at a short meeting of all the staff. Mr D. B. Chakravarty usually did this but always before, when introducing a new member of staff, he had taken the opportunity to talk about the ethos of the school, the high standards it had maintained, and his hopes for its future. The school had been set up in the British time, and Mr D. B. Chakravarty was very keen on the idea that it had managed to maintain the best standards of the past to build a better nation for the future.
Amit had heard this speech several times before. It had been made when he himself had been introduced to the rest of the staff. He had wondered at the time what application it had to him personally, but had been flattered by such fine-sounding phrases. On subsequent occasions, Mr D. B. Chakravarty had made very much the same speech over the head of a series of different new teachers. Mr D. B. Chakravarty’s speeches at Founder’s Day, when the boys placed a garland of orange blossom around the marble neck of the bust in the great hall, were not intended for the boys whom they seemed to address. They were intended for the parents of the boys, who would understand what a good-quality education their sons were receiving. In the same way, when Mr D. B. Chakravarty made these speeches on the arrival of a new member of staff, they were intended to remind the rest of the staff of how they should behave, and the standards they were expected to keep up. The school was a good one, and the headmaster had succeeded, during his twenty years in post, in maintaining the standards he regularly proclaimed.
Khadim Hussain entered the staff quarters with Mr D. B. Chakravarty. They made a small kind of pantomime of politeness at the door: Mr D. B. Chakravarty offered to give way to this unfamiliar face. The unfamiliar face, a thin, alert face with hair divided down the middle, a large nose, thin eyebrows and not very good, rather broken teeth as he smiled, gave a generally not very trustworthy impression. The person insisted, as Mr D. B. Chakravarty offered to follow him into the room, on giving way to the headmaster. But he did so in a smiling, insincerely respectful way. It was not the way of a junior teacher. Amit had the impression, watching this performance, that this person was a government inspector of some sort.
And Mr D. B. Chakravarty did not make his normal speech of welcome and exhortation, but merely said, in a brief way, that this was Mr Khadim Hussain; that he was joining the school from a post in a different part of the country; that his particular area of expertise was poetry and drama, especially in English. He would also be moving about the school in the weeks to come, discovering ‘how things are done here,’ Mr D. B. Chakravarty said. But he turned to the assured man seated by his side, whose eyes were roaming brightly round the room, smiling with his bad teeth as he fixed on any member of the staff. It was as if Mr D. B. Chakravarty was enquiring of the newcomer how things were done here. ‘I appeal to every member of staff to give Mr Khadim Hussain every aid and assistance in their power,’ the headmaster finished. Without waiting to introduce himself to the other members of staff assembled, Mr Khadim Hussain nodded generally around the room. Without speaking, he left the room before the headmaster, holding the door open for him. The headmaster followed.
2.
For six years now, Amit had been teaching at the high school. He taught the boys the Bengali language, poetry and music. At first, he had found them a challenge to teach. Their liveliness had, in Amit’s first year or two, spilled over into chaos. Once, an older master had stepped in from the next room to enquire what this unholy bedlam could be. Amit had believed, after his first year, that Mr D. B. Chakravarty would call him in and ask him to find another position in different circumstances.
But that had not happened and, in time, these matters had improved. In teaching these subjects, he had eventually discovered within himself an authority he had not suspected. He looked with interest, these days, at those of his colleagues who had difficulty maintaining discipline in their classes; he even gave advice to them from time to time. It was not a matter of shouting, he believed, but of a sort of strength within – a sort of stillness or perhaps attentiveness or . . . It had to be said that when you tried to express that sort of thing in words, it always sounded remarkably silly. But Amit, now, had no difficulty keeping the boys’ attention. A firm look would quell the beginnings of rebellion. In reality, he believed that his classes were orderly and he was successful with the boys because the subject was beautiful and they could understand that. Of course they would pay attention, and Amit believed that his contribution to the school’s reputation was generally respected and valued. When he went home to the flat belonging to Mrs Khandekar, which he shared with his friend Altaf, he was cheerful at the end of the day’s work, even exhilarated, and had funny stories to tell his friend about the day’s events.
It was two weeks before Amit came across Mr Khadim Hussain again. The boys were studying a poem by Jibananda Das. It was an advanced class, full of clever boys, and one of them, as Mr Khadim Hussain came into the room without knocking, was standing at the blackboard and reading the difficult but interesting poem:
Nevertheless, the owl stays wide awake;
The rotten still frog begs two more moments
in the hope of another dawn in conceivable warmth.
We feel in the deep tracelessness of flocking darkness
the unforgiving enmity of the mosquito-net all around . . .
The boys looked round as the door opened and Mr Khadim Hussain came in. The boys, surprisingly, stood up in an almost military way. Amit had, from the beginning, excused this class from standing up when he entered. They were nearly adults, and, besides, most of them were taller than him. But they stood up for Mr Khadim Hussain, who came into the room without saying anything. A boy at the back offered Mr Khadim Hussain his chair, and he took it. ‘Sit down, boys,’ Amit said. It occurred to him that the class were more likely to have come across Mr Khadim Hussain in the course of their day than he was. They knew what he expected. In the staff quarters, no one had discussed the newcomer, even when everyone knew that he had inspected a colleague’s classes.
The class went on, in a more awkward way. ‘What does this line mean?’ Amit said, and the boys inspected their textbooks closely, not catching anyone’s eye. ‘Does the poet literally mean an owl when he speaks of an owl? Is there an owl before the poet’s eye?’ Amit was aware that he was rambling and blustering, and the boys had no response to make to him.
‘Does the owl symbolize the world of nature?’ a boy finally suggested.
Amit continued. Mr Khadim Hussain’s piercing eye, at the back of the class, was on him. From time to time, he wrote something in his notebook. His pen jabbed and stabbed at the page.
At the end of the class, Mr Khadim Hussain closed his notebook and placed his pen carefully in the upper pocket of his white shirt. He smiled with his broken teeth at Amit. ‘I believe we must vacate this room,’ he said. Amit had seen his shape going to and fro in the school, and had grown to recognize his sharp, fussy, haste-filled walk in the corridors. He had never before heard his voice, which was deep and slightly lisping. ‘We will talk while we walk.’
Amit put his books together in a pile, and together they left the classroom, leaving the boys to await their next teacher.
‘That was an interesting poem you were teaching,’ Hussain said. ‘What was it?’
Amit explained.
‘You did not ask the boys to explain the moral and religious aspects of the poem,’ Hussain said. ‘Or had you discussed that first of all, before I arrived?’
‘I do not think the poem has a religious aspect,’ Amit said. ‘It did not occur to me to ask the boys to find a religious meaning in the poem.’
They were walking side by side as they talked; they might have been taken for two colleagues undertaking a serious, good-natured, scholarly conversation. Hussain gave a small, disappointed hiss. ‘Have you not thought of teaching poetry first of all if it refers to the Prophet, peace be upon him? Surely that must be the best poetry to teach to our pupils.’
Amit thought that if Hussain taught English literature, he would find it hard to base his teaching exclusively upon writing of that description, but did not say so. ‘Jibananda Das is a very beautiful poet,’ he said. ‘He is one of the best poets in Bengali.’
‘There are other very beautiful poets who write on more elevated themes,’ Hussain said. ‘Owls and frogs, making their noises in the swamp. It does not seem a very elevated subject for poetry.’ He pushed open the double doors that led to the staff quarters. By the headmaster’s study, four boys were waiting on cane chairs to receive punishment for that morning’s misdemeanours. ‘And poetry on religious themes should take first place in education, do you not agree?’
‘Jibananda Das may have written poetry with a religious aspect,’ Amit said, aware that he was treading on dangerous ground here. ‘But he was not a Muslim, so it would not have been the sort of religious poetry you have in mind.’
Mr Khadim Hussain turned and looked at Amit. Amit knew what he meant to convey: that in this school, Hindu poetry was being taught by Hindu schoolmasters, and this was going to come to an end. ‘I think you teach music, too,’ he said.
‘Yes, I do,’ Amit said.
‘And the literature you teach, it seems to be the sort of literature, poetry, that men and women sing in whorehouses,’ Mr Khadim Hussain said. There was no rage in his voice; he seemed perfectly calm, as if establishing a point. Amit could not respond to this. ‘That is what I understood from this morning’s – ah – display. Well, let us see how things develop in the next few weeks and months. We are shaping a new generation here, I believe. It would be a pity if their knowledge was made up exclusively of the ditties sung in the foulest back-streets of Gulistan. I’m sure you agree.’
He opened the door to the staff quarters, indicating that Amit should go in before him. But when Amit was through the door, it swung to behind him. Mr Khadim Hussain had gone on, without saying goodbye, to his next task.
At the end of that week, a typed notice, signed by Mr D. B. Chakravarty, Headmaster, went up on the notice board in the staff quarters, to the effect that Mr Khadim Hussain, BA (Hons) had been appointed deputy headmaster with responsibility for curriculum, with immediate effect.
3.
‘The exhibition has been cancelled,’ Amit said, at home, to Altaf.
‘What exhibition is that?’ Altaf said.
Amit poured out water from the jug into the blue china bowl; he splashed water on his face, then, cupping water in his hands, snorted it up his nose and spurted it out again. Once more, he took a handful of water and splashed it all over his face. When he was done and the dust of the street washed clean, he reached out for his towel. Altaf passed it to him before returning to his cooking.
‘What exhibition were you talking about?’ Altaf said.
‘The boys’ painting exhibition,’ Amit said. ‘It has been going on every year since anyone can remember, even the headmaster. Every January, there is keen competition to be included in the exhibition. There is no prize, but there is a plaque in the art room listing the people who have been declared the best three painters of the year, and the boys like it. “Mother Padma”.’
‘Yes?’ Altaf said.
‘That was the theme set for the exhibition this year. Mr D. B. Chakravarty likes to set the topic himself. He says it enables the visitor to the exhibition to compare like with like, and not have to worry about whether a drawing of tomatoes is better than a painting of the Maidan at Calcutta. And this year he set the topic of Mother Padma. It was a popular topic, I understand. The boys like to paint the river. They find it a challenge, and it requires a trip away from the art room, which of course they enjoy.’
‘But the exhibition has been cancelled.’
‘Mr D. B. Chakravarty set the topic six months ago. And that was really a long while back. It was certainly before the advent of Mr Khadim Hussain.’
‘I take it that Mr Khadim Hussain does not approve.’
‘He discovered about the art prize and the exhibition when he paid a visit to the art room last week, and found it filled with paintings of the Padma river. He does not believe that the school should be teaching art at all, of course.’
‘Of course. Does he aim to turn the school into a madrasa?’
‘And that afternoon, a letter appeared on the notice board saying that the annual art competition and exhibition would not now take place. It was signed by Mr D. B. Chakravarty himself but, then, all the letters that appear in this way are signed by him. I believe that they are written by Mr Khadim Hussain. His power waxes terrible within the school.’
‘Who is he?’ Altaf asked, at length.
Amit considered. ‘He is the new deputy headmaster,’ he said.
‘I understand that,’ Altaf said.
‘But when he arrived, two weeks ago, he was introduced as a new teacher of English. That I do not understand. I would be very surprised to discover that he has taught a single class in English since he arrived, and there are other aspects of his conversation which lead me to think that he does not have a great deal of interest in English as a subject. I cannot understand why Mr D. B. Chakravarty would mislead us in such a way.’
Altaf placed the bowls of dal, fish and rice on the floor between them, and sat down, crossing his legs. ‘I understand that,’ he said. ‘I understand how this man was introduced. But do you think that is who he really is?’
‘No,’ Amit said. ‘I am sorry to say so. But I do not think he is a teacher at all.’
It was six months now since Altaf and Amit had last been to the school of the Bengali arts they had helped to start up. For three years it had been a success. The hall which the university had made available had become a public meeting place, and readings of poetry, exhibitions of art, tapestry and pottery, as well as musical performances and other matters, had taken place there with some popularity. If nothing else, people came there to talk. There was a sense of defiance. Sometimes when the people attending the school of the Bengali arts left the university, they found that there were police officers at the gate, or sometimes merely a group of badmashes lounging in a threatening way. But that had not discouraged the many people who came – the weekly attenders, the occasional regulars, and those who were just drawn in by an interesting subject, or out of a mild, unfocused curiosity. Only a year ago did the numbers begin to fall, until nobody was left but the founders and a pair of undissuadables. Something had changed. No longer did people leaving the Bengali academy sing as they left, as they walked past the police officers at the gate. They hurried out as if they might have been attending anything at the university. And then one day Altaf said to Amit that there was no point in attending the academy any longer; that they could achieve as much by performing at home, at Sufiya’s, at Mr Khandekar’s, at one of a dozen houses in Dhanmondi where they were welcome guests. But those evenings were happening less and less frequently, too.
‘My days are numbered,’ Amit said. ‘I have to face it. This is no country for me any longer.’
Altaf froze. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Altaf, consider,’ Amit said. ‘I believe that Mr Khadim Hussain has been sent into the school to purge it of undesirable elements. Who has sent him? I do not know, but I think he acts in accordance with official instructions. What future is there in this school for someone of my sort, teaching music and poetry? They don’t want a Hindu in front of a class. Mr Khadim Hussain more or less told me that I should stop teaching poetry by Hindus.’
‘It is only one man,’ Altaf said. ‘You can get another job. Dacca is a big city. We can easily manage.’
‘No, it is not only one man,’ Amit said. ‘For the moment it is only one man. But soon it will be everyone. They have put an end to the Bengali academy without having to pass any laws. If they want to stop anything further – the singing of poetry, painting, even those thousands of books they don’t like – they will have to pass laws against them.’
‘We can still sing at home – quietly, with the windows closed,’ Altaf said. ‘And there is your aunt’s money, which you could live on.’
Amit’s aunt, the year before, had died in Cox’s Bazaar, leaving half her little all to Amit. Some division had come between her and her son, darkly hinted at in letters from Cox’s Bazaar, and the legacy, Amit and Altaf had concluded, was by way of a posthumous point-scoring. The money had not been touched: Amit believed that his cousin would come demanding its restitution.
‘No,’ Amit said. ‘Singing at home quietly with the windows closed, that is no good. That is shameful, Altaf.’
‘What shall we do?’ Altaf said.
‘I can travel to Calcutta,’ Amit said. ‘I can take my things and go to India. I still have relations there. They will find a corner of a room for me, and I can make a living of some sort. And there is my aunt’s money, as you say. It is safer for people of my sort there.’
‘It may not get any worse,’ Altaf said. ‘It may not get any worse at the school. This man may have achieved everything he set out to achieve, and now things will start to improve. Please, Amit, don’t do anything just yet. In six months things may be completely different.’
‘Yes,’ Amit said, in his lucid way. ‘That is what I am afraid of. And if I leave now, it will be possible to make my way to Calcutta. But in six months’ time, who knows? And who knows what the mob and their rulers will be doing to a poor Hindu musician? What they will be allowed, permitted by law, to be doing to a poor Hindu musician? Altaf, it is best if I leave now.’
‘Let me come with you,’ Altaf said. He was close to tears. He knew what Amit was like when he had decided something. At these moments, Amit’s practicality came to the surface. He saw things clearly. But for Altaf, being with his friend Amit would always come first. It hurt him that, for the reasons of Amit’s practicality, and not for the first time, it would be best if his own interests and wishes were neglected. Amit never had any suspicion, Altaf believed, that Altaf thought in any other way. Altaf had always hidden his vulnerability.
But Amit now surprised Altaf. ‘Don’t say something which will pain both of us,’ he said. ‘I would rather stay with you. But it is dangerous, you understand. And it would be dangerous for you to come to Calcutta with me. What would you do?’
‘What will you do?’
‘I will manage. And this is not going to last for ever. Perhaps only a few years. And then I can come back, and everything will be exactly as it was before, but Mr Khadim Hussain will be gone and never heard of. You will see.’
‘Only a few years,’ Altaf said. He really thought he would cry now.
‘I will come back, and you will have a beautiful wife, and as I come through the door with a box of sandesh, there will be small children butting their heads at my knees. And you will hardly remember your old friend, returning from Calcutta. You will see how it will be. Altaf, this must be.’
‘Don’t go—’ Altaf said, but his voice was choking. ‘Don’t go tomorrow, at least.’
Amit stared at him. ‘But, Altaf – of course I am not talking about leaving tomorrow. Not this week, or next week.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. But not so very soon.’
4.
The next day, when Amit went into the staff quarters, he found his colleagues clustered around the notice board, peering through glass. He looked, too, and found that Mr D. B. Chakravarty, Headmaster, was taking indefinite leave, due to ill health. In his absence, which was expected to be lengthy, Mr Khadim Hussain, BA (Hons), had been appointed by the school governors and the Ministry of Education to take his place as Acting Headmaster.
A separate notice to the side of this one indicated that a meeting would be held of all staff at the close of the school day in the staff quarters. It was signed Khadim Hussain, BA (Hons), Headmaster (Acting).
Amit, with all his colleagues, attended that meeting and listened to what Mr Khadim Hussain had to say about the new laws emanating from the government about the public status of cultural products, and also about the lines along which this school must now be run. At the end of the meeting he concluded, without mentioning it to anyone at all, that he must leave for Calcutta without any further delay.
5.
When Amit left the apartment in the morning, one week later, it was still dark. Altaf must be still asleep. He would wake in two or three hours to discover that Amit had gone. Perhaps he would understand where Amit had gone. It had been made clear between them. It had proved necessary to leave earlier than he had promised, that was all. But in himself Amit knew what a betrayal this was.
And Altaf would not notice at once that Amit had left. In his hand he had only a very small grip. He understood from the start that it was not going to be easy to cross the border at Jessore. There had been no train from Dacca to Calcutta for years, since the beginning of the war with India. The border was guarded by the East Pakistan Rifles. There was no possibility that they would let anyone through with a large suitcase. In his grip, Amit had placed a clean shirt and change of underwear, for the journey; there were two leaves of soap, for the journey; and for the journey, however long it would be, an envelope of photographs; photographs of Amit’s father, a photograph of Altaf and Amit performing together, caught unaware at a party. Was it at Begum Sufiya’s? Amit was not sure. He placed the photograph with the other important ones, in the envelope, in the grip. In five separate places about his person and in the bag Amit had placed sums of money. The smaller sums he had left conspicuous, in the hope that the border guards and the roaming soldiery would be satisfied with that; the larger he had sewn into the lining of the grip. And, impossible to leave behind, there was a single book: it was a collection of poetry in Bengali. Amit knew most of it by heart, and he took it with him. He did not know what else he could do.
The rest of Amit’s poor possessions he had had to leave behind him. It must be thought that Altaf would only slowly realize that Amit had gone. Amit had thought of writing a letter to leave on the table, but that was impossible. He would write, at length, when he was safe in Calcutta. And behind him he left his shirts and trousers, neatly folded in the cupboard; his own kitchen possessions, his knives and two plates; his rough towels and bed linen; his thirty or forty books, some of which he had had for ever. Most painful was the leaving behind of his tabla. There were so many reasons for taking that – it would be the means of earning a new living in Calcutta. But he left it where it was, on the trunk at the end of his narrow bed, like a gift. It would attract attention to him at the borders and beyond. But more than that, Amit was leaving behind him something that would anchor him to the place he had been happiest. He was a citizen of this apartment, and here was his surety of return. At first Altaf would think he had not left. But then, seeing the tabla at the foot of his bed, Altaf would understand that Amit meant to return.
Amit made his way through the before-dawn streets; the sleepers, shrunken bundles of humanity, buried in layers of blanket, paper, were wrapped in what they could gather from the street’s detritus against the cold of the night; lying like giant seedpods for the day to waken them. One against the other they slept, the prime places against a building’s wall where the warmth resided all through the night. The rest tucked up against each other, backs against each other, separated and sharing their night-coverings. Amit picked his way through their heavy tessellations. As he walked, he remained in the shadows under the trees where they slept. Once, at the T-junction of the main road, he saw, gathered together against the cold, a group of soldiers, manning a roadblock, stamping in the early-morning chill and yawning. They were on the other side of the road. Amit remained in the shadows under the trees, and walked confidently in the dark, knowing that he would not be seen if he did not want to be seen.
The people began to rise, and thicken.
The quiet air was disturbed with the honk and call of humanity waking, and moving, and, soon, beginning to pray. That would send him on his way. He was nearing the bus station. Perhaps in normal times, there would be silence here, in the late small hours of the morning. But yesterday, a hundred Mr Khadim Hussains had gone into a hundred schools, and offices, and businesses, and explained how things were to be from now on. Amit was not the only person who had thought on going to bed that he would rise early, and go to see if he could find a life somewhere else. Tomorrow there would be hundreds more, and the day after that, still more. One day – Amit did not know when that day would be – many hundreds of people more than this would arrive at the bus station, and would discover, at some point in their journey, that they were too late. Weeks or months too late.
Altaf, at ten, had left Calcutta with his family. He had fled from the city because of his religion and his family’s religion. He had told the story of how the train had stopped, and people bearing arms had entered, while he had been stuffed in hiding under the seat of the carriage. In fact, it had not been partisans seeking someone to murder, but soldiers. Amit had heard this exciting story many times from Altaf. Now he was making the opposite journey, for the same reason. Or perhaps an opposite reason. At some point in the journey, people bearing arms might again enter the bus, and this time they might not be soldiers trying to protect them. That was how history worked: a good thing balanced by a bad thing. Altaf still had relations living in Calcutta. If Amit ever reached Calcutta, he would visit them and make an offering afterwards, to his gods, that the day he had chosen to travel was not the day that had proved too late, just as they had stayed where they were, and been saved.
6.
In the dark of the night, Amit fought his way towards the small beacon of the ticket window; the struggle through the crowd in silence. It was like the dim-lit struggles in dreams, through dense and limb-clogging stuff. Those around him were heavy, heaving, weighted, mud-like, and through the dark of the night they pushed against each other in silence or with muffled groans. There were so many of Amit’s type, fighting to leave Dacca. At one point, the hips of two women closed on either side of his wrist, the hand holding the grip and all his money inside. The movement seemed choreographed, and he feared he was being expertly robbed. From somewhere, he found his foot, and went down heavily on a woman’s foot – he had no idea whether he had hit his target, but the women moved, so slightly, and his hand and the grip slipped back to his side of the wall of flesh. It took forty minutes to fight to the front and provide himself with a ticket for the first leg of the journey. Although it was possible to buy a single ticket for the whole journey, it would be much more expensive than getting a bus to the Padma ferry, and on the other side getting a local bus to his destination. He was heading to Jessore. That was where you could cross.
And all the seats in the bus were taken when he reached it. He had no idea how long the journey to the ferry would take – sixteen, twenty hours – and it was with some relief that he saw that a seat by the window was not, after all, taken; a woman had placed a parcel in it, and as Amit forced his way past her, she was shrieking that it was her sister’s place, that her sister was coming, she had sworn she was coming. Amit was firm and, as the first light of day fell and the driver took his place, he shut out the woman’s shrieks and complaints into his right ear by closing his eyes and resting his head against the bars. He could have waited for the next bus to the Padma ferry. But he did not know if there would be a next bus to the Padma ferry, or Jessore, or anywhere.
Later – he did not know how much later – the bus stopped by the side of a river, and all the passengers disembarked. It was the Padma. He had somehow slept most of the journey. The men went to piss in a ditch. The sky was hot and blunt with light. The riverbanks were wet clay cliffs, rawly torn off by the flood, and the same grey colour as the river’s turbulence. The women wandered off with their children to try to find some food, some sweets; one confided in another that she knew a perfect place for hilsha fish, the man who sold the best hilsha fish on the banks by the ferry wharf. But there was nobody. There was only a great queue of buses, waiting for the ferry to take them across. And there were no boats. Only one was now making its slow way from the wharf, for the long hours of the hot crossing. There was none at the wharf, and though the river was so wide the other bank could not be seen, there was no sign of another boat returning. That might be the only boat in service, making its laden way across the river as the hours came and went. And Amit could see that the bus he had travelled in would not be in the next boatload, or perhaps the one after that.
He rested under the shadow of a tree all day long; the boat came, took on one load, and departed. Night fell, and a hundred small camps made themselves apparent as cooking broke out. A constellation of modest fires spread across the riverbank. Amit had no food with him. He had not planned for a journey of this length, and had thought that the vendors he remembered from previous journeys would supply his needs. But perhaps the vendors were fleeing, like everyone else. As there seemed to be no chance of leaving on a boat soon, he lay on the grass under the tree, his grip under his head.
It was nearly dawn before a place was found for Amit’s bus on a ferry. Red-eyed and frail, his bones aching but his grip still in his fist, undisturbed, he leant out from the upper deck of the ferry as it pulled into the river. The sky was lightening from the east and, in an hour, the river’s midstream clarities of blue and silver were all that mattered. All at once, by the side of the ferry, a school of bottleneck river dolphins broke the surface, grey and plump and glistening. Mother Padma: Amit could have won a competition with his painting of it.
A fog of suspicion and fear seemed to lift with the river crossing, and by the end of it, Amit was sharing rice and fish with a family of seven, sitting companionably on the upper deck in the brisk warm breeze. The father was a professor of physics at the college in Jessore, and knew Amit’s school. Indeed, they had acquaintances in common. That seemed to be a necessary condition before they – a Hindu and a Muslim family – could sit down together and share food. They were returning to Jessore from visiting relations in Dacca, and Amit? Oh, Amit was paying a short visit to an aunt in Calcutta, just for a very few days. Amit by now had the second-youngest child on his lap while the mother dealt with the baby; they were friends already. They laughed together about Amit’s neighbour on the bus. Her shrieks and complaints had spread through the bus, and this family had pitied Amit when they realized he had nothing to do with her. When, towards the end of the morning, they saw the far side of the river approached, the family invited Amit to join with them in finding the small local bus that would take them on their onwards journey. ‘After all,’ the professor of physics said, ‘we are colleagues in the same business, the trade of education, after all.’ Amit gratefully accepted, and, once on the bus, they made themselves a small encampment, the eight of them.
‘I do not know how the situation is at the border crossing,’ Amit said to the father of the family. ‘At Jessore.’
‘I heard it is very bad,’ the father said, his voice jolting. The road on this side of the Padma was terrible, unrepaired for years and perhaps decades. The bus banged and rattled into potholes, throwing the passengers about; cries of distress were coming from the front half of the seating. ‘It is hopeless to arrive there after the very early morning. The lines are enormous, and if you arrive at midday, you may queue all day and half the night.’
‘We have been travelling so long,’ Amit said. ‘I do not know when we are to reach Jessore.’
‘I think it is two hours from here,’ the father said. ‘Or a little more. And everything is so much slower these days.’ He joggled the child on his lap, who was sucking his thumb in his sleep, and smoothed the boy’s hair. ‘I do not think we will reach Jessore much before the sun sets.’
‘And then to wait at the border crossing. How long?’
‘I don’t know,’ the father said. ‘Well, it is much easier for us than for you. Our journey ends in Jessore, but you have about as far again to go. Why not come and stay with us? There is no problem. With eight or nine in the house, one more will make not much difference. We will be glad to have you, if you don’t mind resting on a sofa. A tight squeeze, but it will be perfectly all right. Your best plan is to get up very early, to get to the border crossing before first light. Perhaps then we will not have so long to wait.’
Amit was in no condition to refuse: he was dusty, dirty and sore after his night under the tree, and would welcome an opportunity to wash and change his shirt, at the very least. The second youngest child had taken a fancy to him, and Amit carried him on his shoulders from the bus station to the little house, twenty minutes’ walk away, feeling the child’s weight of tiredness fall from one side to the other, feeling that he, too, could welcome a shoulder to sit on, a great pair of arms to lift him into bed. Afterwards, he remembered nothing of this house in Jessore, or of washing or laying himself down or, like the others, of falling into sleep at once, even on this narrow and hard sofa.
In the dark, he was being shaken awake, and all about him were children, like a nightmare of misplaced responsibility and duty. He had no idea where he was, or what had happened to him. He could not understand why Altaf’s apartment was filled with children in the dark. Then he understood where he was and what was happening. He was grateful for tea, but the owner of the house – who was he? – was waving him off, yawning, hiding his small-hours face. A professor of physics, Amit remembered too late, as he sat in the rickshaw. The border approached. For a moment he misconstrued the scene, and it seemed quiet, deserted. But then he understood what he was looking at. It was humanity, unmoving. At the front sauntered a pack of the East Pakistan Rifles, turning from side to side, assessing and ignoring the people before them.
7.
As he saw the posture and stance of the East Pakistan Rifles before the people they had subjected, were subjecting, were about to subject, Amit saw all at once his future. He saw himself manhandled and ordered about by the authorities; he saw the struggle to pass through the smallest of gates with a crowd pressing down upon him. He saw his bag being searched, its lining slit. He saw his money being docketed and counted and taken away from him, with nothing but a few rupees left to his name. He saw his life in India, arriving at his cousin’s house with nothing but a small grip with a slashed lining and an apologetic face. He saw himself working at what he could get, sleeping in the corners of rooms, negotiating and explaining with Indian officials, getting nowhere in the course of weeks. He thought of Altaf, and what lay ahead of him, too. He saw no end to the war that was coming. He saw old women thrown to the street, and a boot crushing the face of a boy as he lay prone in a concrete-floored prison cell.
Amit stepped down from the rickshaw. He said to himself that what must be done must not be shrunk from. He took his place at the back of the gigantic crowd, fighting for admission to India. On the other side of the border, he knew, the train for Calcutta was standing.
8.
It would be five years before Amit returned to Dacca. Before anything else at all, he went back to Altaf’s apartment, the one they had rented from Mrs Khandekar. He still thought of it as his apartment. He had not said goodbye, after all.
Amit seemed to be banging hard at the door of the apartment for minutes. He had concluded that Altaf must have gone out; he made this conclusion to ward off the worse conclusion that Altaf had moved away or, worse, was no longer of the world. He dismissed those from his mind. He would have heard. But how would he have heard? Who would have told him? Nobody knew where he had been living. The chain of acquaintance between him and his family, and his family and his life with Altaf, had been separated, long before the war. He would have heard, nevertheless. Some wound would have opened in the depths of him, and he would have felt that Altaf had given up on him.
There was no response to his knocking. He knew that when he had left, years ago, he would not have left without taking the keys to the apartment. But somewhere in the intervening five years of moving about and asking friends for space for a week or two, of living out of bags, the keys had been mislaid and lost. Amit felt this betrayal, but it was right that, having left Altaf in such a way, he could not in any case have reached for his keys and let himself in. Amit bent to his bag, to find a piece of paper to leave some sort of note for Altaf – he could say that he would return at the same time the next day. But then the door to the apartment opened. It was Altaf. In the five years since Amit had left the apartment without saying goodbye, Altaf had changed. He was thinner; older; his face was lined. Some pleasure lit up in his face on seeing Amit, but it was veiled, confused. Altaf’s eyes were red-rimmed and exhausted. It was almost with a gesture of falling that he put his arms around Amit, and almost with a need for support that he stayed there, leaning on his short friend.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said.
‘So, you see,’ Amit said. ‘I returned. I did return. I promised you I should. But there does not seem to be a wife in our flat. I thought I would return to find a wife and children, Altaf. I think I said I would. But there is no wife, and no children, unless they are out for the afternoon.’
Amit was aware he was babbling, and Altaf was calm and undisturbed by his arrival. It was not the way things had been before, he was sure.
‘No,’ Altaf said. ‘There is no wife.’
‘I was sure you would marry, once I had gone,’ Amit said, sitting down in exactly his old space. Nothing at all seemed to have changed. It was with a small shock that he saw that the teak box was still in the place he had left it. He had brought it from his aunt’s house, the box she had given him and which had been too large for him to carry away with him in his precipitate flight. He had given it not one thought in the previous five years, and Altaf had not moved it; had seen it every day.
‘No, I did not marry,’ Altaf said. ‘There didn’t seem to be a wife to be had. I looked for one, after you went. But there wasn’t one to be had. Perhaps it was the war, and women having to stay inside. They did not want to meet a husband, and I am not much of a prospect as a husband, even if all the women of Bangladesh now decide to marry at once and have to find husbands. Yes, it must have been the war – the war that you ran away to avoid, before it started, remember, Amit? And of course I was doing work for Mrs Khandekar.’
‘How is Mrs Khandekar?’ Amit said. He wanted to ask how Altaf was. He wanted to ask how Altaf’s war had been, and how he had been left at the end of it. But Altaf had made that impossible, and he said, ‘And Mr Khandekar, how is he?’
‘They are still fine, very well,’ Altaf said. ‘One of their sons is no longer with us, however. He was shot by the Pakistanis, retreating.’
‘We Bengalis,’ Amit said, experimenting with the sound of it. He hardly ever said that, nowadays. There was only Altaf he had ever wanted to say it to. As for Amit, he had perhaps saved the word up for his friend to hear first. He did not know whether Altaf had done the same.
‘We Bengalis,’ Altaf said, and smiled. He raised his glass of water from the table where it had been sitting. Amit recognized the glass – a dark blue glass, bubbles blown in the side. Altaf took a deep drink from it, and set it back down. Amit, without asking, took it in turn. Altaf watched him raise it to his mouth without saying anything; a moment later Amit was spluttering. It was not water that Altaf had in his glass, but some sort of back-street firewater. Amit went to the kitchen, and spat out what he had in his mouth. The kitchen was unchanged, mostly, but bleak. When Amit had lived here, there had always been an onion and an aubergine in the vegetable basket, a small sack of rice and a tin of oil to hand. But there was nothing of that here. The basket was empty. There was only an unlabelled dark green bottle in the open cupboard. Amit believed that that was what Altaf had been drinking. When he had rinsed out the taste from his mouth, he came back in, slowly. Altaf already had the glass again in his hand, and did not look up.
‘Is this how it has been?’ Amit said.
‘It was mostly like this,’ Altaf said.
‘I wish . . .’ Amit said. But there was nothing to wish for.
‘How did you think it would be?’ Altaf said. ‘How did you think it would be, when you returned? Do you know how life has been for us, since you went without saying goodbye? I don’t believe you can know.’
‘No,’ Amit said. ‘But I had to leave. You know that.’
It was at some point in the next few days that Amit reached up and, from the top shelf, brought down his tabla. That he had left here. Altaf had wrapped it in oilcloth, and the creases were thick with dust. The tabla was quite all right, however, and Amit next brought down what was in its place next to it, Altaf’s harmonium. He had expected that the harmonium would be dusty, the wood of the case cracked, the instrument’s tone gone through neglect and abandon. But it had been cared for, and regularly handled. Amit still had to master his understanding of the parts of Altaf’s life that had been abandoned, fallen into disuse, and the parts, such as breathing, that had continued nevertheless. When Altaf came back in from his short walk – it was something Amit had told him to start doing – he saw the harmonium, out of its place, and the tabla, too, by it, and he understood. He smiled at Amit, and shook his head slightly before going back to his room to lie down and rest. The gesture was theatrical, kindly, and unconvincing; it meant to convey to Amit that music was over for Altaf, and he would never be able to explain quite why.
Amit smiled too, however, alone in the room; smiled to himself. Altaf did not fool him as easily as all that.