Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

Balaram slapped his face twice, for his eyelids were growing heavy again. He shook his head. It seemed to him suddenly that the noise in Bhudeb Roy’s garden had grown louder. Then, equally suddenly, it stopped. Balaram leant forward on his battlement of oil-drums, tense as a spring, looking from Bhudeb Roy’s empty balcony to the gate which led out of his garden to the path, and back again.

The gate opened and Bhudeb Roy slowly steered his bulk out into the dust path. His sons and his hired men swarmed out behind him. Balaram, breathless, snatched up the empty kerosene-tin and a bunch of hooped wires, and hammered out the signal. The bangs and rattles were deafeningly loud, but Balaram couldn’t help adding his voice: Alu, Rakhal … ashchhe re, ashchhe … they’re coming. His voice sounded oddly feeble to him; perhaps it was just the noise of the tin. He felt his knees trembling, and absent-mindedly he reached down to steady them with his hands. Then he slapped his thigh, angry with himself for wasting time, and leant against an oil-drum and watched Bhudeb Roy advance down the path with his men, in a cloud of dust.

Bhudeb Roy was no longer in the lead; he and his sons were surrounded by his hired men. They were walking fast. They were close. He could see their faces clearly now; he could see the splinters on the sharpened ends of their wooden poles and the bicycle chains, looped expertly around their wrists, like bracelets, with their barbed ends swinging loose; he could almost feel the oiled links in his palm, snaking out stiffly when they turned sideways, swinging freely when they hung downwards. He reached down and ran his palm over the two-foot brass cylinder of his best squirt-gun. He pressed his thumb on the tiny pointed mouth of the nozzle and drew the handle back. Once again he rehearsed his plan: all he had to do was reach Bhudeb Roy with one burst of carbolic, only one, and he would turn and run as fast as his legs would carry him. That was all. His stomach churned: but would it work? Would it work? It had seemed so certain when he planned it, but now, with them so close, their dust in his nose … He could see the sweat hanging on their moustaches now, and their pocket combs, and the folded flick-knives sticking out of their breast pockets. How could it be? It usually took minutes to walk from Bhudeb Roy’s house to his; how were they so close so soon? He sensed his front door opening, heard feet flying down the path, and then Alu and Rakhal were crouching behind the oil-drums on either side of him.

Bhudeb Roy, less than a hundred yards away, saw them, too. He shouted, and his men came to a halt, milling around him, raising a cloud of red dust. Bhudeb Roy cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: Balaram-babu, I want to talk to you. Balaram could see his face, but Bhudeb Roy had been careful not to expose himself any more than strictly necessary. Two men stood in front of him, shielding his immense body.

Balaram-babu, Bhudeb Roy shouted again, don’t worry; this has nothing to do with you. It’s that swine Shombhu Debnath I want. Do you know what’s going on in your house? Do you know that he’s kidnapped my wife and daughter and hidden them somewhere in your house? It’s true; my men have seen foot-prints. Are you, a respectable man, a teacher, a colleague, going to shelter someone who’s kidnapped your neighbour’s wife?

Balaram, intent on gauging the distance between them, heard hardly a word, but he shouted back: Bhudeb-babu, the one thing I’ve learnt from you is that there’s only one answer to anything you say.

As he spoke he wondered at the inexplicable note of politeness that had crept into his voice. He pointed the squirt-gun into the air, deciding that a high trajectory would add to his range, and aimed. Then Rakhal, who had been crouching beside him, ducked below the oil-drums and crawled across the circle, to the tarpaulin-covered heap at the other end. He reached under the tarpaulin and brought out a bottle and a rag. Then he dipped the rag in a tin of kerosene and stuffed it into the neck of the bottle. With a wink at Alu, he struck a match. At the same moment, Balaram drew his shaking hand back and took a grip on the wooden bar of the handle. They heard Bhudeb Roy shout: Balaram-babu, don’t make trouble, stay out of this … And then Balaram slammed the bar forward.

The carbolic acid shot out in an arc and spattered on to the path, raising little mushrooms of dust, a good twenty yards short of Bhudeb Roy and his men. In a burst of jeers and angry shouts, the men started forward. Rakhal leapt to his feet with a tearing scream — Joi Ma Kali! — and threw the flaming bottle high into the air. It sailed out, where he had aimed it, towards the rice field which bordered the path, and disappeared into the rice. A moment later there was a muffled explosion, and the rice around the spot where the bottle had landed was blown flat against the ground, and shards of glass and scraps of metal shot harmlessly upwards.

For a moment Bhudeb Roy stood rooted to the path. Then he turned and ran, with quick waddling steps, towards his house. His men had already sprinted far ahead of him.

Come back for more later, Rakhal called out after them, laughing. We’ll have some more ready for you.

Half an hour later, when it was clear that Bhudeb Roy’s men were not going to return soon, Alu ran into the house to look for Maya. He shouted her name in the courtyard, and looked in the rooms, but she was not in the house. He found her behind the house with her father. They were sitting on the stone parapet which encircled the well, with their legs dangling over the side. He jumped up beside her and began telling her all about it at once. Yes, she said, I know. I watched it from the room above the front door. But he was too excited to stop, and he carried on, gesticulating and stammering, wishing he had the words to tell her of the indescribable excitement, the sheer gut-wrenching thrill of that moment after Balaram’s burst of carbolic fell short, and the men started to run towards them, and Rakhal threw the bottle into the air.

And they’ll come again, he ended lamely, when he noticed that they were not really listening to him. Rakhal said they would come back at night — with some more men and maybe even guns.

What did Bhudeb Roy say? Shombhu Debnath asked. Tell me again.

Alu told him, trying to remember the words he had used. Shombhu Debnath became very quiet, and stared thoughtfully down at the flashes of light in the water at the bottom of the well. Soon after, he jumped off the parapet and walked away.

A little later, when Alu was back in the circle of drums, talking to Rakhal about what might happen next, the front door opened and Shombhu Debnath came out with Parboti-debi and the little girl. Shombhu Debnath was bare-chested, as always, but he had changed out of his usual red gamcha into a threadbare but clean dhoti, and a pair of green plastic sandals. His hair, washed and oiled, hung loose below his shoulders, framing his long angular face. He had a small cloth bundle balanced on his waist. Parboti-debi, her face covered, was leading her daughter by the hand. The girl, showing no sign of her illness, hopped up and down on the path, and Parboti-debi had to scold her to be still.

Shombhu Debnath hesitated before the oil-drums and cleared his throat. Balaram-babu, he said tentatively. Rakhal abruptly turned his back on him and began to hum a tune. Shombhu Debnath had to call out again before Balaram stirred. He turned, distracted and irritated: Ah, yes, who?

Shombhu Debnath smiled crookedly, showing his blackened teeth. Balaram-babu, he said, I’ve come to tell you that I … that is, we are going.

Going? Where?

In the two hours that had passed since he pushed the handle on the squirt-gun, Balaram had experienced a curious sensation, as though every minute that passed were a strop, honing his senses, his memory and his mind together into a ferociously sharp edge of concentration. It was as though that one act, that simple moment of action, had dissolved the past and the present, sensation and memory, mind and body, and distilled them into a blissful wholeness. Nothing mattered, nothing existed now but the ecstasy of waiting for the climax, the discovery which he knew to be at hand. Did Pasteur have an inkling of this terrifying joy when he went to examine Joseph Meister the morning after he had inoculated him with his untested vaccine? Did Einstein, in the last moments before his formula appeared before him on paper? And, still, with him it was different, for with him it was his own life, the past, the present, the future. Nothing else mattered, nothing else mattered now, but the discovery. He could hear a voice, and he even knew it dimly to be Shombhu Debnath’s voice, but it was just words strung together, a jumbled noise; it had no more meaning for him than a rumble of thunder does for an ascetic awaiting a vision.