The Calcutta Chromosome Read online

  'So she told you?' Urmila said.

  'Yes,' said Sonali. 'Shortly before she died.'

  Chapter 17

  AFTER ALL THESE years, Antar still found himself gritting his teeth as he thought back to that day, at the Thai restaurant, remembering how he had sat in his chair, slumped in a stupor of mortification, trying to avoid the stares that were directed at him from the surrounding tables.

  On the way out he had plucked up the courage to stutter an apology to the manager. 'I don't really know him at all,' he said. 'I met him for the first time today. The man's clearly mad. I've never had anything to do with him before, and I hope I never will again.' Back at the office he wasted no time in uploading everything he had on Murugan's case and sending the file back to the Swedish Director. 'If this is what it means to deal with the human side of things,' he recalled saying, 'I think I'd rather go back to accounts, thank you.'

  By the time he left work, he was confident that he had put the whole business behind him. But he got home to find his answering machine blinking furiously: there were three messages on it. He had a twinge of apprehension: it was rarely that he had so much as a single message; he could not remember an occasion when he had had more. His instincts told him to touch the rewind button, wipe the tape clean. But instead, his hand went out and touched 'Play' – just to make sure, he told himself, just so he would know who it was.

  His worst fears were instantly confirmed. There was that voice again, blaring out of the machine, the sound of it even more grating now than in real life: 'Listen, you fucking jerk: you think this stuff's all just a pie in the sky, huh?'

  With a jab of his thumb Antar cut the first message short and forwarded to the next one. 'It's me again,' said the same voice, 'your pal Morgan: your dumbass machine cut me off… ' Antar forwarded to the third and last message and there it was again, that voice: 'Did you know your machine's got the concentration span of a frozen chicken?'

  Antar slammed a finger on the fast forward button, and kept it there until the tape almost ran out. But he still caught the final sentence: 'there's a document waiting for you right this minute, in your mail-folder…' Antar spun around to face his monitor, across the room. Sure enough, the biff was blinking on his screen. He stared unnerved at the blinking elliptical surface of that old-fashioned screen: it was like walking in on a burglar.

  He had to make an effort to pull himself together before he could go over to the keyboard. He deleted the entire document without having read a single line.

  Now, seating himself on the edge of his bed, Antar tried to think back across the years to 1995. He remembered that he had disposed of the answering machine some time after that incident: he had voice mail at Life Watch and call-forwarding when he was out, so he didn't really need it anyway. He scratched his head trying to recall what he had done with the machine. He'd meant to sell it or give it away but no one had wanted it. He had a vague memory of putting it in a plastic bag and shoving it into a closet, with his old clothes and shoes.

  The closet was in the corridor, between his kitchen and his bedroom, a teeming hollow into which, over the years, he had emptied his life. Rising from his chair he went over and gave its closed door a speculative look. The last time he'd opened it was a few weeks ago, while searching for an old laptop: an avalanche of discarded objects had come tumbling off the shelves. He placed a hand on the knob and prised the door gently open. A tremor ran through the closet, but to his relief everything stayed in place.

  He began to empty the shelves, one by one, piling up everything in the corridor: old shoes, timerless toasters, broken umbrellas, accordion files. And then he spotted it, hidden behind a pile of yellowing Arabic newspapers: a brown rectangular shape, wrapped in transparent plastic.

  He took it down and carried it into his bedroom, leaving everything else piled in the corridor. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he unwrapped it, blowing off the dust. He rubbed his finger over the rectangle of clear plastic that covered the machine's microcassette and pushed the eject button. Somewhat to his surprise the mechanism seemed to be in working order. The cassette popped out and he cleaned it carefully, with the corner of his bedsheet.

  Slipping the cassette back, he plugged the machine in.

  The blinking light came on, and the cassette began to turn. And then, punctuated by squeaks from the cassette's dusty wheels, he heard a voice, blunted by the passage of time, but still more or less audible. He turned the volume up.

  'Listen, you fucking creep,' said the voice, just as he remembered it, 'you think this stuff's all just a pie in the sky huh? You think I don't have any proof? Well let me tell you something: I don't know what they call proof down where you live but I've got something that's good enough for me.

  'You remember I mentioned a guy called W. G. MacCallum – a doctor and research scientist who made one of the big breakthroughs in malaria in 1897? OK, listen to this: what this guy did was he showed that the little "rods" that Laveran had seen, coming out of the parasite's hyaline membrane, weren't flagellae, like the great man thought. In fact they were exactly what they look like – that is, spunk – and what they did was what spunk does, which is make babies. You wouldn't think it would take a Galileo to figure that out: I mean what did they look like, for Pete's sake? But the fact is, that MacCallum was the first to get it. He wasn't the first to see it, but he was the first to figure it out. Laveran saw it before him, but he didn't get it: guess Lav-the-Man didn't exactly have sex on his mind. Ronnie Ross saw it about a year before MacCallum did and he thought he'd seen his father. No kidding; he thought the flagella was a kind of soldier, going out to war, like Pa Ross on his white horse. I mean, think about it: Ronnie sees this thing that looks like a prick; it goes swimming across his slide and starts humping an egg, and what does Ronnie make of it? He thinks it's the charge of the Light Brigade. The moral is: just because you take a boy out of Victoria 's England, doesn't mean you've got her out of the boy.'

  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 never 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…'

  Chapter 18

  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 plume, 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 Calcutta . "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 her,' 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…'

  Mrs Aratounian tapped her cane on the floor, in annoyance. 'Didn't I warn you, Mr Morgan?' she snapped. 'And I'll wager you tuppence to a groat he'll go on absolutely for ever.'

  Now Phulboni's eyes filled with tears: 'I have tried, as hard as ever a man has, to find my way to her, to throw myself before her, to join the secret circle that attends her, to take the dust of her heels to my head. By every means available, I have sought her, the ineluctable, ever-elusive mistress of the unspoken, wooed her, courted her, begged to join the circle of her initiates.'

  Mrs Aratounian slammed her cane on the floor. 'Appalling,' she said. 'The man's making an utter exhibition of himself. Isn't anyone going to do anything?'

  'As a tree spreads its branches,' the writer's voice continued, 'to court an invisible source of light, so every word I have ever penned has been written for her. I have sought her in words, I have sought her in deeds, most of all I have sought her in the unspoken keeping of her faith.'

  Here, abruptly, the writer's face disappeared from the screen and a slide of a peaceful mountain scene appeared. But the writer's voice continued, eerily disembodied.

  Mrs Aratounian gave a yelp of laughter. 'Look at that, Mr Morgan,' she said. 'They're so incompetent they can't even cut him off.'

  The voice rasped on: 'If I stand before you now, in this most public of places, it is because I am on the point of desperation and know of no other way to reach her. I know that time is running out – my time and her time. I know that the crossing is nigh; I know it to be at hand… '

  Even though the writer's face was no longer on the screen, it was evident that he was sobbing: '… as the hours run out, when perhaps no more than a few moments remain, knowing of no other means I make this last appeal: "Do not forget me: I have served you as best I could. Only once did I sin against the Silence, in a moment of weakness, seduced by the one I loved. Have I not been punished enough? What more remains? I beg you, I beg you, if you exist at all, and I have never for a moment doubted it – give me a sign of your presence, do not forget me, take me with you… '"

  The screen flickered and the newsreader's face reappeared, sweating lightly. Forcing a smile he began: 'We apologize to our viewers… '

  Mrs Aratounian struggled to her feet, went over to the television set and switched it off.

  'This is the kind of nonsense you have to put up with if you don't have cable,' she said in disgust. 'Night after night. You tell me, Mr Morgan, would you ever hear rubbish like that on BBC?'

  Chapter 19

  ANTAR STOPPED the answering machine and rose to his feet. It was no use regrett
ing the loss of the document that Murugan had posted to his mailbox: if he hadn't deleted it then he would have done so soon afterwards. But possibly, just possibly, it wasn't irretrievably lost. Perhaps Ava could find a trace of it and reconstitute the document: it wasn't inconceivable. Ava knew some pretty good tricks.

  Antar started for the bedroom door: there was only one way to find out.

  Just as he was about to leave the bedroom, he heard a sound – a muffled sound, like a soft footfall. He spun around to face the wall. Tara 's living room lay on the far side, separated only by a couple of inches of plaster and a bricked-in door. It was uncanny how sound carried through that wall.

  Perhaps Tara had come home: Antar was sure he'd heard someone. He went to the wall and knocked: ' Tara, are you back?' There was no answer.

  He hurried over to his kitchen window and glanced at Tara 's apartment, across the air-shaft. The lights were still off: she didn't seem to be home. He shrugged: it must have been a damp floorboard: there was no telling, in a building as old and creaky as this one. He leaned over the sink, splashed water over his face and reached for a kitchen towel.

  He went into his living room and seated himself at the keyboard. With a tap of a key he sent Ava shooting off to rummage through the accumulated memories of all his old, superseded hard disks. It was not unlikely that a binary 'ghost' of Murugan's lost E-mail message had remained somewhere within the system. Even the faintest trace would be enough: Ava would do the rest.

  Moments later a hand appeared on Ava's screen, gesturing morosely, fingers half open. Ava had recently begun to learn body-language – in Egyptian dialect of course – and this was her new way of indicating a negative.