at every door:
it's time
to mark my coming.
Just beyond the boundaries of Calcutta, to the west of the dockside neighbourhoods of Kidderpore and Metia Bruz, lay a length of gently sloping bank that overlooked a wide sweep of the Hooghly River: this was the verdant suburb of Garden Reach, where the leading white merchants of Calcutta had their country estates. Here, as if to keep watch over the ships that bore their names and their goods, stood the adjacent properties of the Ballards, Fergusons, McKenzies, MacKays, Smoults and Swinhoes. The mansions that graced these estates were as varied as the owners' tastes would allow, some being modelled on the great manors of England and France, while others evoked the temples of classical Greece and Rome. The grounds of the estates were extensive enough to provide each mansion with a surrounding park, and these were, if anything, even more varied in design than the houses they enclosed – for the malis who tended the gardens, no less than the owners themselves, vied to outdo each other in the fancifulness of their plantings, creating here a little patch of topiary and there an avenue of trees, trimmed in the French fashion; and between the stretches of greenery, there were artfully placed bodies of water, some long and straight, like Persian qanats, and some irregular, like English ponds; a few of the gardens could even boast of geometrical Mughal terraces, complete with streams, fountains and delicately tiled bowries. But it was not by these extravagant extensions that the values of the properties were judged; it was rather by the view that each manse commanded – for a patch of garden, no matter how pretty, could not be held to materially affect the owner's prospects, while to be able to keep an eye on the comings-and-goings on the river had an obvious and direct bearing on the fortunes of all who were dependent on that traffic. By this criterion it was generally acknowledged that the estate of Benjamin Brightwell Burnham was second to none, no matter that it was an acquisition of relatively recent date. In some respects the estate's lack of a pedigree could even be counted as an advantage, for it had allowed Mr Burnham to give it a name of his choice, Bethel. What was more, having himself been responsible for the founding of his estate, Mr Burnham had felt no constraint in shaping the grounds to his needs and desires, ordering, without hesitation, the clearing of every unseemly weed and growth that obscured his view of the river – among them several ancient mango trees and a heathenish thicket of fifty-foot bamboo. Around Bethel, nothing interrupted the lines of sight between house and water, other than the chamber that stood perched on the lip of the river, looking down on the estate's landing ghat and jetty. This shapely little gazebo differed from those on the neighbouring estates in that it was topped by a roof of Chinese design, with upturned eaves and curved green-glazed tiles.
Recognizing the pavilion from the coksen's description, Jodu plunged his oar into the mud and leant on the handle, to hold the dinghy stationary against the river's current. In passing the other estates of Garden Reach, he had come to realize that the problem of finding Putli would not be resolved by locating the house in which she lived: each of these mansions was a small fortress, guarded by servants who were certain to perceive all interlopers as possible competitors against whom their jobs would have to be defended. To Jodu's eye, it seemed that the garden with the green-roofed pavilion was the largest, and most impregnable, of all the neighbouring estates: deployed across its lawn was an army of malis and ghaskatas, some of whom were engaged in digging new beds, while others were weeding or mowing the grass with scythes. Dressed as he was, in a torn lungi and banyan, with a faded gamchha tied around his head, Jodu knew that his chances of penetrating these defences were very small; in all likelihood within moments of setting foot on the grounds, he would be captured and handed over to the chowkidars, to be thrashed as a thief.
Already, the stationary dinghy had attracted the attention of one of the estate's boatmen – evidently a calputtee, for he was busy caulking the bottom of a sleek-looking caique, applying liquid tar with a palm-leaf brush. Now, leaving his brush in the bucket, the caulker turned to frown at Jodu. What's the matter? he shouted. What's your business here?
Jodu gave him a disarming smile. Salam mistry-ji, he said, flattering the calputtee by raising him a rank or two in the grades of artisanship: I was just admiring the house. It must be the biggest around here?
The calputtee nodded: What else? Zaroor. Of course it is.
Jodu decided to chance his luck: It must be a large family that lives in it then?
The calputtee's lips curled into a sneer: Do you think a house like this would belong to the kind of people who'd live in a crowd? No; it's just the Burra Sahib, the Burra BeeBee and the Burra Baby.
That's all? No one else?
There's a young missy-mem, said the caulker, with a dismissive shrug. But she's not a part of the family. Just a charity-case they've taken in, from the goodness of their hearts.
Jodu would have liked to know more, but he saw that it would be imprudent to press the man any further – it might well get Putli into trouble if word got out that a boatman had come looking for her in a dinghy. But how then was he to get a message to her? He was puzzling over this when he noticed a sapling, growing in the shade of the green-tiled pavilion: he recognized it as a chalta tree, which produced fragrant white flowers and a fruit that had an unusual, sour flavour, vaguely reminiscent of unripe apples.
He assumed a voice like that of his rustic half-siblings, who seemed never to be able to walk past a field without asking questions about the crops; in a tone of innocent inquiry, he said to the calputtee: Has that chalta tree been recently planted?
The caulker looked up and frowned. That one? He made a face and shrugged, as if to distance himself from the misbegotten growth. Yes, that's the new missy-mem's handiwork. She's always interfering with the malis in the garden, moving things around.
Jodu made his salams and turned the boat around, to head back the way he had come. He had guessed at once that the sapling had been planted by Putli: she had always craved the mouth-puckering taste of its fruit. At home, in the Botanical Gardens, a chalta tree had stood beside the window of her bedroom and every year, during its brief season, she had gathered handfuls of the fruit, to make into chutneys and pickles. She loved them so much that she even ate them raw, to the disbelief of others. Being thoroughly familiar with Putli's gardening habits, Jodu knew that she would be down to water the sapling early in the morning: if he spent the night somewhere nearby, then he might well be able to catch her before the servants were up and about.
Now, Jodu began to row upstream, watching the shore for a spot that would be at once hidden from view and near enough to habitation to be a discouragement to leopards and jackals. When one such appeared, he hitched up his lungi and waded through a bank of mud to tether the boat to the roots of a gigantic banyan tree. Then, climbing back inside, he washed the mud off his feet and set hungrily upon a pot of stale rice.
At the rear of the dinghy there was a small thatched shelter and this was where he spread his mat after finishing his meagre meal. It was twilight now; the sun was setting on the far bank of the Hooghly, and the shadowed outlines of the trees in the Botanical Gardens were still visible across the water. Although Jodu was very tired, he could not bring himself to close his eyes while the skies were still bright enough to shed light upon the bustling life of the river.