The Lives of Others (70 page)

Instead of congealing the horror to embarrassment, Madan’s tears move all the women in the room – Charubala, Sandhya and Chhaya – to a similar point of release. Dabbing at her eyes with the end of her sari, Charubala finds it difficult to speak without giving in to the tide of emotion within her. It is Chhaya who breaks the silence.

‘Madan-da, what is going on, can you tell us?’ she asks.

Madan’s account, in a brittle delivery, is stitched through with sobs: ‘Ma, what can I say, what’s written on the forehead will come to pass . . . Was this what was in store for me in my old age? I can’t show my face anywhere any more . . . the shame, the shame! . . . The police say I’ve stolen Mejo-boüdi’s jewellery . . . You tell me, is this possible? Do you remember the time, Ma, when I found your diamond earrings in the bathroom, I brought them over to you straight away . . . and that other time, when you couldn’t find your gold ring, who was it that found it hiding behind the gas-cylinder in the kitchen? And now they say I’m a thief, a thief . . .’ He is like a plaintive child in the middle of a long protest, having just bruised himself against the essential, indurate unfairness of the world.

‘No, Madan-da, it is unbelievable that you are a thief,’ Sandhya is moved to intervene and console, ‘but we are at a loss to understand how it happened, we cannot believe our ears.’

Madan pauses, maybe to draw some succour from this, then continues, ‘They came to search my room, so I said search away, I have nothing to hide. They begin to look, sweeping things aside, turning everything inside out, upside down, but what possessions do I have, nothing much, they knock everything down and . . . and suddenly one of them . . . the small, dark one with the pot-belly, he says he has found something, it was under the brass statuette of Krishna in my room . . . Boro-boüdi, I had forgotten that it was hollow inside, the thought never crossed my mind in all these years that something could be hidden there . . . god is punishing me, I know, he’s punishing me for I don’t know what, but for some sin, otherwise why would that ring be hidden under his statue? The policeman shows it to me and asks . . . asks what else am I hiding and where have I hidden everything, then . . . then he slaps me . . . he hits me and shows me the ring and asks do I recognise it . . .? And I say that I don’t, it’s not mine, how can I afford such a thing and he says, Oh, I see that every joint in your body is aware of the price and value of such things; he taunts me . . . Ma, what can I say?’

He stops to draw breath and the reactions to his words all rush to crowd into the vacuum of that lull.

‘Purnima’s ring in your room? This . . . this cannot be believed,’ Chhaya says, only now beginning to let the fact permeate her understanding.

‘But how did it get there?’ Priyo says rhetorically.

‘Who put it there?’ Adi asks.

‘Did they find anything else? Not in your room,’ Chhaya hastily adds, ‘but elsewhere? Have all the rooms been searched?’

‘My head is reeling,’ Charubala says feebly. ‘Purnima’s ring in our Madan’s room,’ she keeps repeating, as if articulating the words will give the scarcely credible occurrence the solidity of fact.

‘Where are the police?’ Adi demands.

‘Yes, why have they not notified us of anything?’ Priyo says. He feels oddly polarised; on the one hand, it is his wife’s jewellery that has been stolen; on the other, the sympathies in the room are all directed at the man accused of the theft. Should he be angry with Madan-da and break the solidarity that has developed in the room? But how can he will himself to side with the accusers of this man who is part of his earliest memories, a man who has never been anything but upright and honest, who has treated him only with affection and indulgence? But then why is he pricked by this sense of betrayal towards his wife when he acknowledges his natural feelings for this man? It is just as well that Purnima does not form part of the parliament to which Madan-da has brought his supplication.

When the constables enter the sitting room, all four of them, they are adamant about taking Madan away. ‘For questioning,’ they say.

‘What are these questions that have to be asked in the police station?’ Charubala asks. ‘Why can’t you question him in front of us now?’

‘We have orders,’ one of them answers.

‘Who has given the orders?’ Adi is on a roll now that he knows he is dealing with minions. ‘Ask your inspector to come and talk to me.’

But the roar behind the words is half-hearted and the constables on duty, bred to detect, because their livelihoods depend upon that talent, the tiniest movements in the hairsprings that drive power, know instinctively that Adi is not the one calling the shots, not in this particular game; his roar is of the child wearing a lion mask on stage.

Madan prostrates himself at Charubala’s feet and howls, ‘Ma, I’ve eaten your salt, I would never do something like this, I’d much rather take poison than steal from you, Ma, Ma, please tell them they’re making a mistake.’ Then, in his fear and anguish, he turns erratic with his targets – he clings first to Adi’s feet, then to Priyo’s, crying, ‘Bor’-da, Mej’-da, I’m telling the truth, I’m touching you and saying this, if it’s a lie, god’s going to bring down endless punishment on me, I didn’t take Mejo-boüdi’s ornaments, I swear I didn’t. Please save me, save me!’

Sandhya turns to her husband and says with something approaching anger, ‘Why can’t you do anything? Why are you sitting there silently?’

No one moves. The despair has turned everyone to stone; Adi and Priyo seem unable to move their feet away from where Madan is writhing.

As he is hauled up and pushed out of the room he turns to the ineffectual gallery one last time. Something has changed. The tears on his face are not yet dry. His mouth is now twisted not with agony, but with contempt. He snarls, ‘This is how it ends, I should have known. The milk and the mango-flesh mell, the mango-stone is always rejected.’ He tries to laugh mockingly, but it comes out as a short, acid bark. There is a disparate crowd outside, people in the street, outside the houses, faces at windows, figures standing on their verandahs, all feasting on the unexpected treat of a man’s supreme public humiliation; fodder for conversation through the shrivelled days of dearth.

An ashy gloom descends on the house; its grasp is tight, but the effect it has on the Ghoshes is one of slackness. Even the recurring and compulsive discussions are underlined by tiredness, resignation. The questions go around in a barren loop: how could the burglar have got hold of the keys to Purnima’s safe? It must be an inside job or else how could he have known which was the right key? How could the heist have happened right under their noses? Where was Purnima when the theft was in progress? How come no one had noticed anything? It had to be an inside job, in that case. But who on the inside? They chase their tails, but like clockwork toys whose wind-up energies are coming to the end.

Charubala has to explain the events to her husband, now slow-witted with illness, several times before he can comprehend the narrative. He says, ‘The police are right. Never trusted that man, especially after he put his son up to all that union mischief. The enemy inside is far more powerful than the enemy outside.’

Charubala retorts sharply, ‘If all fathers had to suffer for the deeds of their sons, you wouldn’t have been here to make these tart comments.’

Supratik is back home well before dinnertime. Sandhya hovers around in his room, trying to help him put his things back in their place while simultaneously keeping up a running commentary of the day’s events, which her son has missed. Supratik goes through the usual motions of a periodic ‘Hmmm’ or ‘I see’ or ‘Really?’

Sandhya asks, ‘You are the clever one, can’t you shed some light on this?’

He answers, ‘If Madan-da has really taken Boro-kaki’s jewellery, all power to him. They are poor people, the stuff is going to be useful to them. Your lot have more than enough already.’

It is not until later, not until she is in bed, picking over the day, knotting and reknotting all that has happened, unable to sleep, that his outrageous words return to her and she notices, for the first time, that he said ‘your lot’ and not the usual, expected ‘we’.

Inspector Saha comes along the following day and attempts to convince the Ghoshes of Madan’s culpability. ‘Who else knows the ins and outs of the family, the smallest details?’ he asks. ‘Who is in charge of what set of keys, which key opens which safe and which almirah, who comes in, who goes out of the house and when, the routine of every single one of you – who knows all this? We have ruled out the others. Gagan, your driver, doesn’t stay in the house overnight. Besides, he hardly ever comes inside. Malati and Kamala – well, they would have needed a man’s help to do it. The day-maids who do the cleaning and the laundry, likewise. Who does that leave?’

Sandhya says, ‘But . . . but he is like one of us. He has been with us since my husband was one year old.’

‘Look, I’ll hope you’ll pardon me for saying this, but this is how these people operate. We’ve been seeing cases like this crop up all over the city. They play a very long game, get your trust completely, then one day’ – he claps his hands – ‘all into thin air, both servant and jewellery. For what is he doing it? What is the motive?’ the Inspector continues, saying the word in English,
moteebh
, and repeating it with pride – ‘What is the
moteebh
? You know all about the problems with his son, Dulal; they happened at your factory, union leader and all that. Did you know that Dulal set up an electrical-goods store in Jadavpur after he lost his job at Bali? The shop’s not doing well, he’s drowning in debt. Where do you think the money to set up in retail business came from? There was no way out for Madan but to get his hands on some money quickly. Hence the burglary.’

Sadhya and Chhaya exclaim in concert, ‘What? What are you saying? We didn’t know all this . . .’

Neither did Adi, but he is not going to let his surprise show. He is the one who asked SP Dhar and Inspector Saha for a favour – to ‘talk’ to their colleagues in Bali and enlist their ‘help’ when union troubles were beginning to get out of hand – and he cannot give the Inspector the pleasure of showing his amazement, if the SP and the Inspector have made Dulal’s subsequent business a matter for their interest. The Ghoshes have not forgotten that the police refused to come when Prafullanath went to confront Dulal, but they can do little in retaliation. In the coalition government the issue of labour unrest had been moved, in a shrewd manoeuvre by the CPI(M), from a law-and-order issue under the Home Ministry, a Congress portfolio, to the domain of the Labour Minister, a CPI(M) man. Or so SP Dhar had said then, his voice dripping with well-honed regret and affront at such political football. It strikes Adi again that it had suited the police very well to say that their hands were tied. But why then this ongoing show of concern, of consultation and democracy, with the SP coming to inform him about Supratik, and now the Inspector being all solicitous and chummy and a bit too forthcoming with explanations over Madan-da’s arrest? Atonement for that error with his father? Or, more likely, that they do not want to burn the bridge, however unimportant and small, with the Ghoshes?

He recoils inwardly at the man’s professional mixture of authority and ingratiation, but brings himself to look at the Inspector’s face to be reminded of those shifty eyes again; yes, they are the same if tinier than last time because the Inspector’s face is puffing up as if in geometric progression with age. Inspector Saha turns to Adi, to appeal to a man about matters of the world that men understand better, and catches Adi looking at him then averting his eyes instantly as their gazes meet, but not before Adi has noticed the Inspector’s recognition turn into something that Adi cannot quite put his finger on, something truculent, something that resides more in the territory of power than obsequiousness.

Inspector Saha continues as if nothing has passed between them: ‘And, of course, we have cast-iron proof: we found the ring in his room. How else would you account for that?’ he asks triumphantly.

Purnima echoes him, ‘Yes, how else? How else?’

Chhaya cannot let this pass, so she begins, ‘Oh, I’m sure there can be many explanations for that—’ but stops abruptly because she does not have a single one handy and it would not do to be asked and have nothing to show; such loss of face in front of Purnima.

Sandhya, suddenly mindful of the fact that the Inspector has not been offered a cup of tea, leaves the room to direct the staff in the kitchen; there is no Madan-da to look after these things any more.

Inspector Saha says, ‘The big question facing us now is how to recover the items? Has he sold them? Is he using someone as a fence? We’re questioning him to see what we can unearth.’

Priyo flinches; he has some understanding of the exact nature of this ‘questioning’ business. It would have been preferable to follow the kind of natural unspooling of these things that happened in more common, lower-middle-class neighbourhoods – a hue and cry raised after the accused, a ragtag bunch of people gathered to beat him in public into confessing – rather than have the police question him in jail. At least with the method where people took the law into their own hands, they, the Ghoshes, could have been witness to the rough justice of the crowd, they could have
seen
the worst, they could even have intervened. They would not have had to speculate about what was being done to the unfortunate old man in the foetid privacy of prison.

Inspector Saha says, ‘You understand we’re living through difficult times. President’s Rule again, twice in as many years. Governments rising and falling as if they’re doll’s houses, terrible law-and-order situation, getting worse by the day. Heh-heh-heh-heh, who knows what lies in store tomorrow?’

There, that fawning laugh again, Adi thinks, as he suppresses a shudder; the SP had clearly trained his junior well. Hearing it is like having a bucket of cold snot thrown on you; you want to rub yourself with a loofah afterwards for hours. As if in rhythmic response, the fan flutters the pages of the Charu Paper calendar on the wall; it sounds like mockery.