She took a grip on the ladder and climbed quickly up. At the top, the smoke suddenly welled up in her face, forcing itself into her lungs. She stuffed the end of her sari into (her mouth, in an effort to choke back a cough, and looked in.
The narrow, flimsy looking gallery was empty. Pulling her feet up, she sank down and flattened herself on the floor of the gallery. She noticed now that the smoke was even thicker here than it was below; trapped by the ceiling, it swirled around the gallery in dense clouds. Lowering her face, she held her sari pressed against her watering eyes. They were smarting so much now that she knew she would not be able to keep them open for more than a few seconds at a time.
When the stinging had dulled a little, she thrust her head to the edge and looked down. She caught a glimpse of the tops of dozens of heads, some male, some female, young and old, packed in close together. Their faces were obscured by the smoke and flickering firelight but she spotted a couple of weatherbeaten Nepali faces that she was sure she had seen before, when Ramen last brought her to the house. For the rest it seemed like a strangely motley assortment of people: men in patched lungis, a handful of brightly painted women in cheap nylon saris, a few young students, several prim-looking middle-class women – people you would never expect to see together.
Narrowing her eyes against the smoke, Sonali followed their gaze to the fire, burning at the far end of the room: a heap of coal-dust was glowing red in a brazier, improvised from a battered cement pan. Then she had a shock: somewhere among the faces around the fire she spotted a face she knew. She looked again: it was a skeletally thin boy in a T-shirt. Sonali reeled: it was the boy who had been living in her servant's room for the last few months, there could be no doubt about it. He was smiling, saying something to the person next to him.
There was a small clearing in front and every now and again the boy and the others around him would reach in and touch something. Sonali could not see what it was: her view was blocked by several closely packed heads. The crowd was bunched thickly around whatever it was that was lying there; everybody in the room seemed to be staring at that space.
Sonali shut her smarting eyes and let her head drop to the floor. Her sari was drenched and she could barely move her limbs. The floor seemed to turn under her: she knew she was very close to losing consciousness.
Then there was a stir in the crowd and Sonali forced herself to look down again. A figure had come out of the shadows: it was a woman and she was dressed very plainly – in a crisply starched sari, with a white scarf tied around her hair. Her figure was short and matronly and Sonali took her to be in late middle age. She looked very familiar; Sonali was certain she was someone she had once known but hadn't seen in years.
She had a cloth bag slung over one shoulder, an ordinary cotton jhola, of the kind that every student takes to college. In her left hand she was carrying a bamboo birdcage. She seated herself by the fire and placed the bag and the birdcage beside her. Then, reaching into the bag, her movements brisk and businesslike, she took out two scalpels and a pair of glass plates.
She arranged the plates and the scalpel in front of her, on a piece of white cloth, and reached into her bag again. She took out a small clay figure and touched it to her forehead, before setting it down beside her. Then she reached out, placed her hands on whatever it was that was lying before the fire and smiled – a look of extraordinary sweetness came over her face.
Raising her voice, the woman said to the crowd, in archaic rustic Bengali: 'The time is here, pray that all goes well for our Laakhan, once again.'
Suddenly Sonali was struck by a terrible sense of foreboding. Raising her head as high as she dared she looked again into the space by the fire. She caught a glimpse of a body, lying on the floor.
The drumming rose to a crescendo: there was a flash of bright metal and a necklace of blood flew up and fell sizzling on the fire.
Sonali's head crashed to the floor and everything went dark.
THE DAY AFTER
Chapter 24
IT WAS seven fifteen in the morning and Urmila was nearing the end of her tether. She was in the kitchen, grinding spices, perspiration dripping off her face on to her grease-spotted sari. She had already been up an hour: she had given her parents their breakfast; she had cleaned the kitchen; she had fed and bathed her nephew and niece; she had washed her younger brother's uniform for his afternoon football match. She would have to leave within the hour if she was to be on time for the press conference at the Great Eastern Hotel. But there was still the business of the fish to deal with, and there was no sign of a fish-seller yet.
Urmila looked out of the kitchen window, trying to estimate how long it would take her to run to Gariahat Bazaar and back. She was in trouble, she knew, unless something miraculous happened soon: it would take at least half an hour if she had to go down to the bazaar, what with picking out a fish and bargaining and all the rest – there was no way around that.
The flat was on the third floor, boxed in on every side by other multi-storey buildings. The kitchen window was the only part of the flat that had a view, other than the balcony. It commanded a glimpse of a sliver of the city: she could see the ragged, spreading skyline of south Calcutta stretching away longitudinally, from the park below – a vista of mildew-darkened roofs vanishing into the smudged glow of a lowering monsoon sky.
Down below, in the park, the usual half-dozen cricket matches were already in progress. She could hear the thud of wood on leather and a few drowsy voices, shouting encouragement. In another corner of the park half a dozen men were busy swinging clubs and doing push-ups, below the tin roof of a body-building school. Further away, RashBehari Avenue was stirring in anticipation of rush hour. But the roadsides were still relatively empty except for a few shoppers hurrying back from Gariahat Bazaar, along the short-cut, with clumps of vegetables hanging over the tops of their nylon shopping bags.
The short-cut to Gariahat Bazaar curved off from the main avenue a few hundred yards away. It was a long, narrow lane whose principal landmark was a rambling, oldfashioned house, with a gravel driveway, a pillared portico and a well-tended garden. The house was clearly visible from the kitchen: Urmila's eyes often fell on it when she was working there. It was Romen Haldar's residence.
Just then the doorbell rang.
'The bell's ringing, Urmi,' her mother called out from her bedroom. 'Can't you hear it?'
Her father was out on the balcony with his paper, going through the Announcements column, a favourite morning pastime. He was reading the entries out aloud to himself, spitting out the names like chewed fish-bones. He put the paper on his knees and looked up. 'Who is it?' he called out. 'Someone go and have a look.'
Almost immediately her sister-in-law's voice came floating out of her bedroom: she was feeding her baby and couldn't get out of bed. Her older brother had already left to catch a morning train. Her younger brother was in the bathroom, snapping his fingers and singing, 'Disco diwana'.
Then her mother called out, in her softest, most cajoling voice: 'Go and have a look, Urmi, no one will if you don't… '
I'm busy here! she wanted to scream. Can't you see; I'm busy here, trying to get things ready before going to work…?
The doorbell rang again and now her six-year-old nephew ran into the kitchen and began to tug at her sari. 'Open the door, Urmi-pishi,' sang the boy. 'Urmi-pishikirrni-pishi, open the door, open the door… '