Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

‘You have come to tell me that you want to go home,’ he said. ‘Am I right?’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘May I ask why?’

‘I am useless here. There’s nothing I can do for you that you cannot do better for yourself. And with Dolly gone. .’

He cleared his throat, cutting her short. ‘And may I ask when you will be coming back?’

She made no answer, looking silently down at her lap.

‘Well?’

‘You deserve better than me.’

He turned his face away abruptly, so that she could see only one side of his face.

‘You can marry again,’ she said quickly, ‘take another wife. I will see that my family makes no objection.’

He raised a finger to silence her.

‘Could you tell me,’ he said in a coldly formal voice. ‘What did I do wrong? Did I mistreat you? Behave badly?’ ‘No. Never.’ The tears welled up in her eyes, blinding her. ‘You have been nothing but kind and patient. I have nothing to complain of.’

‘I used to dream about the kind of marriage I wanted.’ He was speaking more to himself now than to her. ‘To live with a woman as an equal, in spirit and intellect: this seemed to me the most wonderful thing life could offer. To discover together the world of literature, art: what could be richer, more fulfilling? But what I dreamt of is not yet possible, not here, in India, not for us.’ He ran his fingers over the letter in front of him, picking idly at the heavy wax seal.

‘So you’ll go back to live with your parents then?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve picked a good time.’ He gave her his thin, ironic smile. ‘You would have had to pack your things soon enough anyway.’

‘Why?’ She was suddenly alert. ‘What are you talking about?’ He picked the letter off his desk and tapped it with his gold-rimmed glasses. ‘This is from the Chief Secretary, in Bombay. It came today. A reprimand, as it were. The Princess’s pregnancy has awoken our teachers suddenly to the enormity of what they have done to this family. All the letters that I and my predecessors wrote had no effect whatever. But the smell of miscegenation has alarmed them as nothing else could have: they are tolerant in many things, but not this. They like to keep their races tidily separate. The prospect of dealing with a half-caste bastard has set them rampaging among their desks. I am to be the scapegoat for twenty years of neglect. My tenure here is terminated and I am to return to Bombay.’

He brought his fingertips together and smiled across the desk in his thinly ironic way.

‘As I said, you’ve chosen a good time to leave.’

In the Ratnagiri boathouse there was one craft that was rarely used. This was the double-oared racing scull that had once belonged to Mr Gibb, the rowing legend.

It was the Collector’s practice to go down to the Ratnagiri boat-house a couple of times each week. He had done a little rowing at Cambridge and would have done more if he had not been so busy studying for the Civil Service examinations. He enjoyed the focused concentration of the sport, the sense of moving ahead at a regulated pace, quick but unhurried. Besides, he had an almost religious belief in the importance of exercise.

Today, as he was walking into the boathouse, the Collector’s eyes fell on Mr Gibb’s racing shell. The elderly chowkidar who looked after the boathouse talked often of Mr Gibb. He was a rowing blue, Mr Gibb, and a skilled sailor besides. In the history of the Ratnagiri Club he was the only person who was known to have taken the slim, fragile craft out into the open sea and come back to tell the tale.

On his departure Mr Gibb had donated his shell to the boathouse. Since that time the boat had turned into a monument of sorts, a reliquary of Mr Gibb. It lay at one end of the shed and was never used. The Collector said to the chowkidar: ‘How about this one?’

‘That was Mr Gibb’s boat,’ came the answer. ‘It was in that boat that Gibb-sahib used to row out to sea.’

‘Is it usable?’

‘Yes, sahib. Of course.’ The chowkidar was proud of his job and worked hard to keep his boats in good repair.

‘Well then, perhaps I’ll take it out today.’

‘You, sahib?’ The chowkidar gasped. ‘But Mr Gibb was very experienced—’

The Collector bridled at his tone. ‘I think I can manage it,’ he said coldly.

‘But, sahib—’

‘Please do as you’re told.’

The boat was carried out to the water and the Collector climbed in and picked up the oars. He rowed once across the bay and turned round. He felt oddly exhilarated. The gap between the two arms of the bay began to beckon.

For several weeks now, he’d been thinking of trying the sea channel. He’d watched the local fishermen when they were slipping out of the bay, marking in his mind the precise point of their exit, the route through which they led their crafts into the open sea.

One day, he’d told himself, one day. . He would start with a short, experimental foray, to test the waters, as it were. One day. But there were no more days now. Next week he would be in Bombay, in a windowless office, dealing with municipal taxation. He scarcely noticed that his craft had veered from its trajectory; that its nose had turned westwards, pointing towards the opening of the bay. It was as though the shell had been reclaimed by the spirit of some other, departed official, as though it were steering itself.

He felt strangely reassured, at peace. It was best to leave these things to men like Mr Gibb: you would always be safe with them, looked after, provided for.

There was no reason to hurry back to the Residency. No one was waiting for him there. The sea seemed warm and inviting and the scull seemed to know its own way.

High above the bay, in Outram House, the King was on his way to the balcony, with his father’s gilded glasses clasped in one hand. He had lain awake much of the night and was up even earlier than usual. Dolly’s departure had created an unquietness in the house. He was sensitive to these things; they upset him. It wasn’t easy to cope with change at his age. He’d found it hard to sleep.

He lifted the glasses to his eyes. The light was not good. The fishermen of Karla village were not out of the estuary yet. Then he spotted the thin, long shape of a racing shell arrowing across the dark water. The oarsman was rowing in a strong, steady rhythm, almost touching his knees with his forehead before straightening out again.

He was taken aback. It was a long time since he had last seen the shell steering for the open sea — not since Mr Gibb, and that was a long time ago, more than ten years now. And even Mr Gibb had never ventured out on the sea during the monsoons: he wouldn’t have thought of it, he knew about the cross-currents that swept the shore during the rains.

He watched in surprise as the streamlined craft shot forward in the direction of the foaming white line that separated the calm waters of the bay from the pounding monsoon sea. Suddenly the boat buckled and its nose shot out of the water. The oarsman flung up an arm, and then the undertow took hold of him and sucked him down, beneath the surface. The King started to his feet, in shock. Gripping the balcony’s rails, he leant over the balustrade. He began to shout: ‘Sawant! Sawant!’

It was early in the morning and his voice had grown prematurely feeble. Sawant was asleep in the gatehouse, on his string bed, with one arm thrown protectively over the First Princess.

‘Sawant, Sawant!’

It was the Queen who heard his shouts. She too had been up all night — thinking of Dolly, remembering how she’d come to her as a child, of how she’d been the only person in the palace who could quiet the Second Princess; of how she had stayed on when the others left.