No Country: A Novel (29 page)

I repeated doggedly what I had been rehearsing in my head. “Because, let’s just say, all British governance is not bad. I want to be a part of those who govern.” I found myself trying to stare down my father. “I don’t forever want to be part of the ruled.”

All these years later, I remember vividly how my father had stood before me, bespectacled, housebound, as usual holding a half-read newspaper in his hand.
I do not want to be like you,
I had said to myself: but stopped myself from saying it aloud.

“You’ll quit college?” he asked.

“I don’t see the point in staying on at St. Xavier’s College.”

“And business is not where your talent lies? You have made up your mind, Son?” He seemed to be pleading. For a moment I felt I was being importuned by a stranger.

“Well, in this matter of business, there is a family resemblance,” he added with a rueful smile, reaching over to touch my hand, but I stood too far away.

He sat down heavily, shaking his head. Old business ledgers lay
ignored in a heap on the floor beside him. On his desk, numerous bits of paper sticking out between the leaves, lay his books of history, bound moss-green volumes of
The Studio
, assorted music scores. The slanted ray from the high window behind him made an untidy halo of his hair, the pouches under his eyes lending him a sleepy and child-like air. What could I have explained to him when I understood so little of my life?

“So you feel you need to hide a part of yourself?” he asked me. I was a little taken aback.

“What would I hide?” I retorted. I wondered how much he knew or had heard from others about me, or if he guessed anything of my mourning Estelle Thompson’s loss. “A uniform always hides some part of the wearer,” he said. “It takes away something precious, and gives you a kind of armour. But tell me if I’m wrong.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Dad,” I shot back, though I did know I wanted to choose a life as far removed from his as possible, one where I would be in control of things, where I could flex and use my muscles. I wanted to fall into bed and sleep the slumber of the exhausted. But all I could say was to repeat myself: “I don’t.”

“You used to call me Baba,” he said ruefully, “It is odd how we are made to choose sides. We are Irish and we are Indians. We don’t have to choose as the world would have us do.”

“I like to ride,” I said, wanting my words to remind him of the comforts we had lost. “I will get to ride the police horses.” But he seemed not to notice my jibe. “I am to meet the Commissioner of Police himself later today. You know him—Sir Charles Tegart.”

“I had read he had been recalled to Europe. So, he has returned. No matter. It is a strange thing surely,” my father mulled,
“how so many of the Irish become policemen for the English Crown.”

“Sir Charles Tegart was knighted,” I blurted out. “Everyone knows his courage. You should remember.”

“Courage,” said my father, “courage,” as if he were turning over a pebble he had found on the ground. “The Indian boys keep trying to kill him for all the things he has done. ‘And he is in blood stepp’d so far . . .’ ” His voice was low, as if he were speaking entirely to himself. “You wish to polish and shine your courage too?” he asked me curiously, raising his head.

“I wish to have breakfast and go keep my appointment.”

“It is early, but I shall have breakfast with my courageous son.” He wanted to try to reason with me, I could see. Mathur hovered around us, and the smell of ghee-chapati and fried eggs and frittered aloos filled the air.

I felt the familiar anger rise in me. Unobservantly he reached out again, this time touching me lightly on my shoulder. He was shorter, so that when he spoke he had to look up at me like a supplicant.

“You know who you are?” he said softly, as he led me to the table. I decided to treat it as a non sequitur. My father seemed to be flanked constantly by our Indian ancestors on one side and Irish ones on the other. Why could he not be uncomplicated, like Tony Belletty’s or Tim Doyle’s dad?

“What you are going to become,” suggested my father, “may have something to do with being Irish and being Indian,” and then he added, almost to himself, “and seeking yourself.”

I shook my head, trying to ignore his words, and ate hurriedly. I longed to get away in my crisp new uniform, to be salaamed to, and to snap my own salutes to senior officers, to find myself
in a place where rank and order were organised, obvious, and defined.

As I gulped the last of my tea, my father intoned,
“Inty Minty Papa Tinty.”

It was the first line of a nonsense rhyme my friends and I used to chant as children as we stood in a circle, marking one of us off with every word, before starting our game of cops and robbers. The one with the last word pronounced over him became the cop. My father chanted,

Inty Minty Papa Tinty,

Taan Toon Tessa

Ugly Bugly Boo . . .

Then, with a flourish, he pointed his finger at me, saying,
Out go YOU!

I was the cop.
In spite of my father’s odd attempt at comedy, he looked flushed, a vein throbbing at his temple. I rose and went to my room to get dressed in my uniform. I read my name tag:
Aherne
. Yes, I knew who I wanted to be.

•  •  •

I
ARRIVED WELL
before time at the gate of Lalbazar, the vast red edifice which housed the police headquarters in the heart of Calcutta. My uniform fit me well—I had had a tailor tuck it in here and there—my face was scrubbed, not a hair out of place. I could well have been at my first communion. The officer at the front gate came out with a sheet in his hand. His name tag said Hartley. One of the fair-skinned Anglo-Indian Hartleys of Beckbagan.

“In uniform, eh, Aherne?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, saluting him stiffly.

“You’re one of the Special Branch boys, I see.” He was checking his clipboard. “Sir will see lucky you at his office. You know where that is, man?”

“Isn’t it here?” I looked at the three huge rectangular blocks of the large red building stretched like a vise. “I mean, where is it?”

“Aherne,” said Hartley knowingly, “you won’t be wearing a uniform much, man, if you are chosen for Tegart’s Special Branch. You are going to be lurking about.” He gave me directions to Elysium Row, a quiet lane not far from the spired St. Paul’s Cathedral.

I walked past the marble wedding-cake memorial to Queen Victoria that Lord Curzon had erected, in front of which sat a big black statue of her on ample haunches, jowls imperial, holding a globe, with what looked like a metallic doily draped over her bronze head. I was on my way to serve the empire she had left behind.

I came to a nondescript lane which branched off from Theatre Road, under shady deodar and neem trees, a dim, almost sleepy, path to an unremarkable building with just a number on it. As I closed the gate behind me and walked into the front hall, two men—clearly policemen in plainclothes—appeared at once from two doors on either side

“Aherne,” I said to them, “to see the Commissioner.”

“You’re expected. Go straight up to the top floor. It’s the door marked ‘Private.’ No need to knock, Aherne.”

I climbed the wooden staircase while the policemen disappeared as if I had imagined them. Pushing the door which swung open silently, I stepped inside the room, bare except for a few armless chairs and a huge bureau with a green felt top. On it lay two pistols.

The room appeared empty until, through the leg-space of the desk, I spied a tangle of arms and naked thighs, a strained neck, and two heads—red with exertion. With an abrupt heave the bodies lurched up, and one of them pinned the other down over the green felt, his hand in a painful twist-hold behind his back, the veins of his neck clear as cords. The man behind forced his adversary forward until his forehead touched the tabletop, then, leaning down, took the tip of a blood-red earlobe between his teeth, while his adversary uttered a sound, as much a growl as a moan. Who made the sound I could not tell, but the pinned man’s palm thumped the desktop twice, and the wiry man holding him down released him and straightened up, and I saw that he was Tegart! The two men stood side by side, virtually naked, glistening with sweat, gazing at each other, chests heaving with exertion.

Tegart barked a word, and on that abrupt cue, both pounced on the guns and raised them at me. I had no time whatsoever to react. By some trick of mind, everything moved as if underwater, slowly, ponderously. In another part of my brain, I knew it was all lightning fast, that I would surely die. I watched the two dark holes pointing at me, the flex of the fingers on the triggers, the clicks of their hammers, the sharp report.

I closed my eyes involuntarily.

When I opened them, I saw wisps of smoke drifting from the muzzles as the men ran over. Beside me on the wall was a canvas stretched over a very thick wad of felt and cork on which was painted a likeness of a Hindu, black hair parted in the middle, thick eyebrows above dark eyes. On the left side of his chest were two holes.

Tegart, the stockier of the two men, touched the bullet holes with his index and middle fingers. When he withdrew them, they were smudged black, and he rubbed them over the painted face.

“More life-like now, eh, Colson?” he said. Colson chuckled. Then Tegart turned and seemed to notice me for the first time.

“Aherne,” he said ruminatively, as if deciding on my name. Something stopped me from referring to Amritsar and the nightmare ride on the train, but I was sure he remembered and had selected me to work directly under him in the Special Branch.

“No uniform from tomorrow. Dress as you people normally would,” he added. I could not place which word held the sting, if it were there at all, or if it was simply an instruction. I kept my face impassive.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“This is Assistant Commissioner Colson.”

I saluted while Colson nodded and, stripping down completely, began to wipe himself with a towel.

I looked back at Sir Charles Tegart, also naked now, beginning to put on his socks. He had a few gray hairs. I also noticed that he shaved his armpits, and his nails were perfectly manicured. This was the man whom the Indian nationalists wanted dead, and indeed had tried to kill several times. Tegart had always managed to escape, and in a couple of instances, killed
them
.

“Will that be all, sir?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you when we’re done, Aherne,” he said, not turning. Tegart and Colson finished dressing in a leisurely way, talking as if I were not there at all.

“Done,” he finally announced. As I turned to open the door, Sir Charles called me back.

“Oh yes, Aherne, there are two dossiers waiting to be signed by me. Leary downstairs will be done with the paperwork in an hour. Walk them over to me. I am off to the Bengal Club,” he said, tying his cravat. I knew the looming building of the Bengal Club on Chowringhee Road, facing the Maidan. Only Europeans allowed
there. I would have to wait outside its back gate on Russell Street until Tegart sent some peon, when he remembered.

I shut the door after myself.

These men ruled India.
This is what I had wanted, wasn’t it?
I remembered the words that my father had said this morning.

Out go you
.

•  •  •

I
N OUR TIGHT-KNIT
group of Tegart’s Special Branch, he was not Sir Charles Tegart. Just
Sir
. There was no other sir but Sir. I began to understand why I had been chosen. I was athletic, eager, and unformed. Tegart was moulding me to his purpose. I wondered what would be left of my father’s son.

The Bengalis, like burly Biswas or sly Majumdar, he recruited carefully, almost warily, because he knew he could not operate as effectively without them; but he knew we Anglo-Indians would give our lives for the smallest sign of approval from this white man who seemed indifferent to their shade of skin. Some newspapers had written about Tegart’s Irish nature, but I comprehended that it was nothing of the sort. Sir was colour-blind in the execution of the Empire’s power. And there was some other kind of blindness in him, but I did not quite know the word for it then.

We grew into a shadowy family and kept as many secrets from each other as any other. But there were few secrets from Tegart.

•  •  •

I
THOUGHT OFTEN
of leaving the Elliot Road house and moving into accommodations for the police force, debating whether there
was a disadvantage in being seen to go in and out of these, especially given the nature of our clandestine work.

Our cook, Mathur, who was getting old, would potter into my room, sometimes to have a letter written or read to him, and occasionally for desultory talk. He was lonely ever since his cat died. It must have been Mathur who saw my valise in a corner where I had piled my things that day. When I returned from work, I noticed an envelope with my name scrawled on it lying on top of my pile of clothes. I tore it open and saw, not my father’s usual firm handwriting, but a wavering script:

This is not a whit more my house than it is yours, Son. My father built it for us, his family. A home, like the sky itself, can no more be mine than yours. Robert, dearest son, by forsaking it you make me an exile too. This is the place for your family, present and future.

I have no other claim to it, now or ever.

I put the letter away among my papers, but felt an intangible umbilical cord tied me to the house and could not bring myself to cut it, although more and more I threw myself vehemently into my job, giving all my waking hours to the Special Branch, returning home long past midnight most nights. I made no exception on my birthday, though I confess to feeling a pang in the small hours when I came home to find my uncut homemade chocolate-and-toffee birthday cake growing stale in the unforgiving April heat of Calcutta. By my twenty-fifth birthday, my father finally stopped having them baked. It had taken him six years to give up.

In my new life, I had fallen into the routine of walking early along deserted streets on Sunday mornings, to the wide-open green of the Maidan across Chowringhee Road, to ride one of the
Police Brigade horses. Quite often, I would see Mr. Tegart’s huge Packard cruising down the Chowringhee. That was his Sunday habit, driving around the city at dawn with his Alsatian dog beside him. I would salute him, and Sir would casually raise one finger, holding his mobile court.