It was the link with Shombhu Debnath which really upset Bhudeb Roy. It worried him so much that he managed to find time to speak to Balaram about the matter.
One day Balaram was summoned to Bhudeb Roy’s office in the school. He went reluctantly, for he hated the office. Five portraits of Bhudeb Roy stared out of its narrow walls. Two of them — one a photograph of Bhudeb Roy in a black gown, holding his BA degree, and another, a picture of him in Darjeeling, his massive bulk posed playfully against a railing with the Himalayas in the background — had incense sticks burning reverentially under them.
Balaram could not bring himself to sit in that room. He stood stiffly, holding the back of a chair, and said: Yes?
Sit down, Balaram-babu, said Bhudeb Roy. Balaram shook his head. As you please, said Bhudeb Roy, sticking a plug of tobacco into his jaw with his little finger. His jaw worked laterally as he chewed on it.
Balaram-babu, he said, your decisions are your own and I don’t want to interfere, but I have to think about the good of the school. Do you think anybody will want to send their children to a school where they will be taught by a man who has apprenticed his own nephew to a weaver? Think about it, Balaram-babu. I leave it to you, but perhaps you should think about your future in the school, too.
Balaram turned and would have walked out, but Bhudeb Roy called out after him: Wait, Balaram-babu. Have you thought about what you’re doing? You’re putting his health at serious risk. People like us can’t do that kind of work. He’ll fall ill, and you’ll be responsible. He’ll have to drink water there, maybe even eat there. I don’t believe in caste, as you know, but their food is dirty. Very dirty. Have you thought about that?
Balaram had not. He stopped worriedly. Do you mean, he said, their food may have germs?
Yes, yes, said Bhudeb Roy, germs.
But, Balaram said, thinking hard, their food must be cooked by Maya, and Maya cooks in our house, too, sometimes. There can’t be much difference.
Bhudeb Roy’s tiny eyes hardened. His voice rose: Balaram-babu, you’re calling disaster on yourself. I warn you: stay away from that man Shombhu Debnath. Have you any idea what that man is like? Why, he’s not even a good weaver.
Balaram had to turn sharply on his heel and walk out of the room. It would not have been correct to let Bhudeb Roy see him laughing.
You couldn’t expect Bhudeb Roy to be dispassionate about Shombhu Debnath.
Once, a long time ago, there were a few toddy palms on a patch of land behind Bhudeb Roy’s house. They were rented to a toddy-tapper, and they yielded a fair income every year.
But one year the toddy-tapper refused to pay rent any longer. His toddy-pots were empty every morning, he complained, and he earned nothing from the palms any more.
That was an eventful year. Bhudeb Roy married Parboti-debi and brought her to Lalpukur that year, and it was at about the same time that Shombhu Debnath first arrived in Lalpukur.
The toddy-tapper was a drunken old man, but shrewd. Bhudeb-babu, he leered, if you wanted some, why didn’t you tell me? You’ll hurt yourself climbing those trees.
Bhudeb Roy, red-faced: What do you mean?
The old man, nodding towards the curtains which had screened the consummation of Bhudeb Roy’s nuptials, whispered conspiratorially: Bit dry, is she? He was hurled out of the house.
But no one else would rent the palms, either. It became common knowledge in the village that the pots which were hung up in the fronds to catch fresh toddy at night were usually dry in the morning. But there was nothing wrong with the palms — the nicks in the trunk oozed fresh milky toddy through the day.
It became a deeply shameful matter for Bhudeb Roy. He was bombarded with tips on wife-rearing. Everybody was full of sympathy: he was too soon married to be driven to drink by a wife. Bhudeb Roy could only gnash his teeth. It was true that he could not always understand his Parboti, but she was as gentle a woman as any in the village.
Bhudeb Roy decided to solve the mystery. He bought a huge torch in Naboganj and one night he waited up in his room, nervously holding on to Parboti-debi’s ankle. He discovered something that made the blood stop cold in his veins.
Late at night, in the furry blackness before dawn, an eerie noise wafted out of the toddy palms and curled around the house. It was like a hoarse wail; a high, gliding, sobbing wail. Bhudeb Roy’s joints melted. He jammed his mosquito-net tight under his mattress and put a pillow over his ears.
Parboti-debi watched him with a smile. It’s like the night calling one, she said, isn’t it?
Bhudeb Roy, astonished: Have you heard it before?
Yes, she said. I hear it every night. She smiled. At the time she was pregnant with her first son (he of the incipient moustache and old man’s paunch). She was an imposing figure then, very far from the wispy, harassed woman, stooped with fecundity, that she became later. She was erect and tall (taller than Bhudeb Roy), fresh-faced, with hair which shone like painted glass. She had a low, rich-timbred voice, very pleasing. It was said that she used to sing once. But Bhudeb Roy had put a stop to it: No shrieking in my house; besides you need your strength for your children.
Why didn’t you tell me about the noise? Bhudeb Roy said.
You didn’t have a torch, she said, smiling limpidly.
After that Bhudeb Roy slept with two pillows over his head. One night he woke to find Parboti-debi gone from his bed. The room whistled with the jagged echoes of that distant wailing. Biting his knuckles Bhudeb Roy crept to a window and shone his torch out. It fell on Parboti-debi, in her white night-time sari, stock-still in the mango grove behind their house.
Bhudeb Roy decided that something had to be done. Wails were bad for pregnancies. So he decided to hire Bolai-da, who was on leave from the Army, to investigate the mystery with him.
It was a mistake. Bhudeb Roy discovered too late that Bolai-da’s real love was gossip.
Bolai-da was thin and painfully bandy-legged even then, but it was only much later that his face twisted mournfully sideways, like soggy cardboard. At that time, because he was the only soldier in the village, nobody doubted that he had the courage of a pride of lions. He could look a Sardar-ji in the eye, people said. A real one, with a proper turban and everything. He had once knocked over a seven-foot, mustachioed and bandoliered Pathan. The wails would shrivel, everyone agreed, at the very sight of Bolai-da.
The stories gave Bhudeb Roy courage. He armed Bolai-da with a wooden club and bought new batteries for his torch. Then he locked Parboti-debi into their room and told her to shut her ears and pray if the wailing started again. She looked very distressed, and Bhudeb Roy was flattered by her concern. But she said nothing.
Bhudeb Roy and Bolai-da wrapped themselves in blankets and went down to the mango grove to wait. With eerie punctuality, in the awful blackness of the last hours of the night, howls wafted through the mango grove. Bhudeb Roy pushed Bolai-da. Bolai-da pushed Bhudeb Roy. Coward, said Bhudeb Roy. I thought you’d knocked over a seven-foot Pathan?
To tell you the truth, Bhudeb-babu, Bolai-da said through chattering teeth, a bus I happened to be on did it.
They held each other’s shoulders and crept forward, towards the palms. They were no more than a yard or two away when the wail suddenly soared and splintered into a comet of high notes. Bhudeb Roy leapt backwards. Somehow his feet entangled themselves in a creeper. He fell with a shriek.
The wails froze into silence. Then they heard a voice, a disappointing, all too human voice, slurred but perfectly comprehensible: Come up, come up before it finishes.
It was Bolai-da who recovered the torch and shone it into the palm. He spat on the ground and smiled at Bhudeb Roy. Bhudeb Roy did not see him, for he was crouching in the undergrowth, his head between his arms.