Amitav Gosh - The Calcutta Chromosome

Here there was a beep and the voice was cut abruptly short. A moment later it resumed: 'It's me again, your pal Morgan, your dumbass machine cut me off. Now, where was I? Oh yeah, MacCallum.

'Anyway, MacCallum was just a kid, and a Yank, stuffed full of pumping red-blooded hormones, and he knew what he'd seen all right. He wrote a paper fast as he could and presented it at a big doctors' convention in Toronto in 1897. It went down so well that he got to go jogging with Mr Germicide himself, Lord Lister.

'OK, so MacCallum was the first to figure it out. But back when he was getting started on his research, he worked with a whole team down at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. The other members of the team were Eugene L. Opie and a guy called Elijah Monroe Farley. MacCallum and Opie were the heavies, while Farley was kind of like the water-boy and gofer. He didn't last long. Just when the team was getting started on malaria, Farley got the itch to see the world. He volunteered his services to a missionary group from Boston, and next thing anyone knew he'd shipped out for India.'

Here there was another interruption. With an aggrieved comment, Murugan's voice resumed:

'OK, so you want to know how I know all this? It happened like this: a couple of years ago I was looking through Eugene L. Opie's private papers in Baltimore. I was checking out his lab notes, and what do you think fell out? A letter from Dr Elijah Monroe Farley addressed to Opie. It was like it had been left there to wait for me. Farley wrote the letter after visiting a lab in Calcutta – a lab run by a guy called D. D. Cunningham. That was the lab where Ross ran the last lap of his race, in 1898. D. D. Cunningham was his predecessor at the lab, and Ross didn't get there until early 1898. But this letter was written in 1894 and it was the last thing Elijah Farley ever wrote.

'To cut to the chase: you know what was in this letter? Well there was a lot of stuff – I mean like pages and pages of stuff – but buried under all the garbage there was this sentence that proves that Farley had already found out about the role of the so-called "flagellae" in sexual reproduction, long before MacCallum. That is, he already knew what MacCallum hadn't yet discovered. And when I worked out the dates and stuff, it was clear that the only place he could have learnt it was in Calcutta. But who could he have learnt it from? D. D. Cunningham didn't know and didn't care and at this time Ronnie Ross was still in the research equivalent of Montessori school. Fact is, Ronnie ne v e r managed to work out the stuff about the flagellae for himself: just couldn't bring himself to deal with all that sex happening under his 'scope. He only found out in 1898, when Doc Manson mailed him a summary of MacCallum's findings.

'And that's not all. Remember Ross's assistant – Lutchman or Laakhan or whatever you want to call him? Well, I have a hunch Farley met him long before Ross did: in fact Farley may have seen too much of him for his own good.

'The trouble is, Farley's letter was uncatalogued, and I only saw it that one time. I put it back, and filled out a form asking for permission to xerox it. But it wasn't there the next time I looked. The librarian wouldn't believe me, because it wasn't on the catalogues. I've never been able to find it again, so strictly speaking I still don't have my smoking gun. But I saw it and I held it in my hands and when I got back to my motel that day I wrote it up, as I remembered it. And guess what? You can have a preview: if you look at your monitor, you'll see there's a document waiting for you right this minute, in your mail-folder…'

MURUGAN ARRIVED at the guest house to find Mrs Aratounian watching TV and drinking pale-yellow gimlets.

'Why, there you are, Mr Morgan,' she said, patting her fraying, antimacassared sofa. 'Do sit down. I was just beginning to worry about you. Can I pour you a gimlet? Are you sure? Just a chota – a tiny nightcap to bring you sweet dreams?'

Mrs Aratounian had discarded the blue velvet dressing gown she was wearing in the morning, when Murugan arrived; now she was dressed in a white blouse and severe black skirt. Bottles of Omar Khayyam Dry Gin and Rose's Lime Cordial stood on a small carved table beside her, barely visible amongst clumps of leaves, growing out of ornate brass planters.

She followed Murugan's eyes anxiously as his gaze strayed to the table. 'No?' she said, squinting at him over her bifocals. 'You don't like Omar Khayyam? I've got a bottle of Blue Riband gin somewhere; just for special occasions. I could go and look for it: I know it's here somewhere.'

'Omar Khayyam will do just fine,' said Murugan. 'Thank you.'

'Good,' said Mrs Aratounian. Reaching for a glass, she poured out a careful measure of gin, then added a splash of lime cordial and an ice cube. 'So what did you do with your day, Mr Morgan?' she said, handing the glass to Murugan.

Before Murugan could answer, there was a loud burst of music from the television set, and a voice announced: 'And now we take you to our special news programme… '

'News!' Mrs Aratounian said sardonically, settling back into her sofa. 'I get more news from the sweeper-woman than I do from this thing.'

A blandly smiling man in a kurta appeared on the screen, sitting behind a bunch of drooping lilies. 'The Vice-President was in Calcutta earlier today,' he announced, 'to present the National Award to the eminent writer Saiyad Murad Husain, better known by his nom de p l ume , Phulboni.' Abruptly the newsreader's face disappeared from the screen, to be replaced by the Vice-President's, nodding sleepily on the stage of the Rabindra Sadan auditorium.

'Oh no,' groaned Mrs Aratounian. 'It's one of those beastly functions where everybody makes speeches. I really must get cable; everyone in the building has it but I…'

The camera swept over a large, packed auditorium, and zoomed in on the front row. Just visible at the corner of the screen were two women standing in the aisle. One of them turned briefly towards the stage before following the other woman down the aisle.

Suddenly Mrs Aratounian sat bolt upright. 'Why,' she cried excitedly, pointing at the TV set with her cane. 'There's Urmila! Imagine seeing Urmila on television! Why, I've known her since she was in school, at St Mary's Convent.'

She turned confidingly to Murugan: 'A scholarship student of course – her family could never have afforded a school like St Mary's. She was the mousiest little thing you ever saw, but lo and behold a couple of years ago she went off and got herself a job at Cal cutt a . "What's the world coming to," I said to her, "when I have to get my news from a chit of a girl like you?" '

The camera panned across the audience again and they had another glimpse of the two women, one a good way ahead of the other.

'Hey!' Murugan thumped his knee. 'I know those two…'

'That's Sonali Das,' Mrs Aratounian cried. 'Another of my customers at Dutton's. And such a celebrity tool'

She gave Murugan a speaking look and a half-smile. 'I could tell you a thing or two about h e r, ' she said.

Chuckling to herself, she took a sip of her gimlet.

The camera panned to the stage and Phulboni's haggard face appeared, filling the screen. Mrs Aratounian gave a yelp of disgust. 'Oh no,' she said. 'Heaven help us; one of those pompous old windbags is going to make a speech. They're at it all day. I really must get cable; you can even get BBC I'm told…'

Suddenly the writer's hoarse, rasping voice filled the room: 'For more years than I can count I have walked the innermost streets of this most secret of cities, looking always to find her who has so long eluded me: Silence herself. I see signs of her presence everywhere I go, in images, words, glances, but only signs, nothing more…'