The Midnight Palace Read online

  The stranger’s voice betrayed no accent or emotion of any sort. Carter swallowed hard, then fixed a friendly smile on his lips and turned round to pass his visitor the cup. A gloved hand, with long fingers sharp as claws, closed round the scalding china without a moment’s hesitation. Carter sat down in his armchair and stirred sugar into his tea.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Carter. I suppose you must be very busy, so I’ll be brief.’

  Carter gave a polite nod.

  ‘What is the reason for your visit, Mr …?’

  ‘My name is Jawahal, Mr Carter,’ the stranger explained. ‘I’ll be frank. My question may seem odd to you, but have you found a child, a baby, just a few days old, either last night or today?’

  Carter frowned and did his best to look surprised. Nothing too obvious, but not too subtle either.

  ‘A baby? I’m not sure I understand …’

  Jawahal smiled broadly.

  ‘I don’t know where to begin. You see, it’s rather an awkward story. I trust you’ll be discreet, Mr Carter.’

  ‘But of course, Mr Jawahal,’ replied Carter, taking a sip of his tea.

  The man, who had not tasted his cup, relaxed and launched into his tale.

  ‘I own a large textile business in the north of the city,’ he began. ‘I am what might be described as comfortably off. There are those who would call me wealthy, and rightly so, I suppose. I’m responsible for a number of families and I’m privileged to be able to help them as much as I can.’

  ‘With things the way they are, we all need to do what we can,’ said Carter, his gaze fixed on those two dark inscrutable eyes.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ the stranger continued. ‘The matter that brings me to your worthy institution is a painful one, and I’d like to put an end to it as soon as possible. A week ago a young girl who works in one of my factories gave birth to a baby boy. It seems that the father of the child is an Anglo-Indian rogue who disappeared as soon as he heard of the girl’s pregnancy. I’m told that the girl’s family come from Delhi. They’re Muslim, very strict, and they were not aware of the situation.’

  Carter nodded gravely.

  ‘A couple of days ago one of my foremen told me that, in a fit of madness, the girl fled from the house where she was living with some relatives. It seems she was intending to sell the child,’ Jawahal went on. ‘Don’t get me wrong. She’s a good girl, but she was under so much pressure that she became desperate. Which isn’t so surprising – this country is just as intolerant of human weakness as yours is.’

  ‘And you think the baby might be here, Mr Jahawal?’ asked Carter, trying to bring him back to the subject.

  ‘Jawahal,’ the visitor corrected him. ‘Let me explain. Once I became aware of the circumstances I felt responsible, in a way. After all, the girl worked for me. I combed the city with a couple of trusted foremen and discovered that she had sold the child to a loathsome criminal who sells babies to professional beggars – a phenomenon that nowadays is as common as it is deplorable. We found the man, but, for reasons that are now irrelevant, he managed to escape. This happened last night, near your orphanage. I have reason to believe that, fearing what might happen to him, he may have abandoned the baby nearby.’

  ‘I see,’ said Carter. ‘And have you informed the local authorities of this matter, Mr Jawahal? The trafficking of children is punished severely, as you must know.’

  The stranger folded his hands together and gave a little sigh.

  ‘I was hoping to solve this problem without having to go to those lengths,’ he said. ‘If I did that, I would implicate the young girl, and the child would be left without a father or a mother.’

  Carter sized up the stranger’s story, nodding slowly and repeatedly to show he understood although he didn’t believe a single word.

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t be of help to you, Mr Jawahal. Unfortunately we haven’t found a baby or heard of any child being found nearby,’ Carter explained. ‘Still, if you leave me your details I’ll get in touch if I hear anything, although I’m afraid I would have to inform the authorities if the baby was abandoned outside this orphanage. That’s the law, and I can’t ignore it.’

  The man stared silently at Carter for a few seconds without blinking. Carter held his gaze and didn’t alter his expression, although he could feel his stomach shrinking and his pulse accelerating, as if he were facing a snake that was about to strike. Finally the stranger gave a pleasant smile and pointed in the direction of the Raj Bhawan, the palatial government building that rose in the distance.

  ‘You British are admirable observers of the law, which is to your credit. Wasn’t it Lord Wellesley who, in 1799, decided to move government headquarters to that magnificent site in order to lend its laws greater weight? Or was it in 1800?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not an expert on local history,’ Carter replied, disconcerted by the sudden twist Jawahal had given the conversation.

  The visitor frowned, mutely signalling his disapproval of Carter’s confessed ignorance.

  ‘With only two hundred and fifty years to its name, Calcutta has so little history that the least we can do is learn about it, Mr Carter. But, returning to the subject, I’d say it was in 1799. Do you know why the move was made? Wellesley, the governor general, said that India must be ruled from a palace and not from an accountants’ office; with the ideas of a prince, not those of a spice trader. Quite a vision, I’d say.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Carter agreed. He stood up, ready to see the visitor out.

  ‘All the more so in an empire in which decadence is an art form and Calcutta its main showcase,’ Jawahal added.

  Carter nodded his head, not quite sure what he was agreeing with.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time, Mr Carter,’ concluded Jawahal.

  ‘On the contrary,’ replied Carter. ‘I’m just sorry I haven’t been of any assistance. In such circumstances we must all do what we can to help.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Jawahal agreed, also standing up. ‘Once again, I appreciate your kindness. I just wanted to ask you one more question.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ answered Carter, although he couldn’t wait to get rid of this man.

  Jawahal smiled maliciously, as if he’d read Carter’s thoughts.

  ‘At what age do the children you take in leave this place, Mr Carter?’

  Carter couldn’t hide his surprise.

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m being tactless,’ Jawahal added hurriedly. ‘If that is the case, please ignore my question. I’m just curious.’

  ‘No, not at all. It’s no secret. The boarders at St Patrick’s remain under our roof until the day they turn sixteen. That’s when the guardianship period ends. At that point they are considered to be adults, or so the law says, ready to take charge of their own lives. As you can see, this is a privileged institution.’

  Jawahal listened attentively and appeared to be considering the matter.

  ‘I imagine it must be very painful for you to see them leave after having cared for them all those years,’ Jawahal observed. ‘In a way, you’re like a father to all these children.’

  ‘It’s my job,’ Carter lied.

  ‘Of course. But – if you don’t mind my asking – how do you know the real age of a child who has no parents or family? It’s a technicality, I suppose …’

  ‘The age of our boarders is set from the day the child is taken in, or else the institution makes an approximate calculation,’ Carter explained, feeling uncomfortable about discussing the orphanage’s procedures with the stranger.

  ‘Which makes you a little god, Mr Carter.’

  ‘That is a view I do not share,’ Carter replied dryly. Jawahal relished the displeasure on Carter’s face.

  ‘Forgive my audacity, Mr Carter,’ Jawahal replied. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you. I may visit in the future and make a donation to your noble institution. Perhaps I’ll return in sixteen years’ time; that way I’ll be able to meet the youngsters who become part
of your large family today …’

  ‘It will be a pleasure to receive you then, if that is your wish,’ said Carter, leading the stranger to the door. ‘It looks like the rain has got worse. Maybe you’d prefer to wait until it dies down?’

  The man turned towards Carter and his pupils glowed like two black pearls. He seemed to have been weighing up every gesture, every expression from the moment he’d entered the office, sniffing out any cracks in the story and analysing every word. Carter regretted extending his offer of hospitality. At that precise moment the only thing Carter wanted was to see the back of this individual. He didn’t care if a hurricane was laying waste to the city.

  ‘The rain will stop soon, Mr Carter,’ Jawahal replied. ‘Thanks all the same.’

  Right on cue, Vendela was waiting in the corridor as the meeting ended, and she escorted the visitor to the exit. From the window of his office Carter watched the black figure setting off into the rain then disappearing among the narrow streets at the foot of the hill. Carter stood there for a while, looking out of his window, his eyes fixed on the Raj Bhawan, the seat of the British government. A few minutes later, just as Jawahal had predicted, the rain stopped.

  Thomas Carter poured himself another cup of tea and sat in his armchair gazing out at the city. He had grown up in a place similar to the home he now managed, in Liverpool. Within the walls of that institution he had learned three things that would always serve him well: not to overvalue material comforts, to appreciate the classics and, last but not least, to recognise a liar from a mile away.

  He took a leisurely sip of his tea and, in view of the fact that Calcutta could still surprise him, decided to start celebrating his fiftieth birthday. He walked over to a glass cabinet and took out the box of cigars he reserved for special occasions. Striking a match, he lit the valuable item with due calm and ceremony. Then, putting the flame to good use, he pulled Aryami Bose’s letter out of the drawer and set fire to it. While the parchment turned to ashes on a small tray with St Patrick’s initials engraved on it, Carter savoured the cigar and, in honour of Benjamin Franklin, one of his childhood heroes, decided that their new tenant would be called Ben, and that he personally would put all his energy into making sure the orphanage provided the boy with the family fate had stolen from him.

  BEFORE I CONTINUE WITH MY STORY AND START describing the events that took place sixteen years later, I must take a brief moment to introduce some of its protagonists. Of course, while all of this was taking place in the streets of Calcutta, some of us had not yet been born and others were only a few days old. Yet we had one thing in common, a circumstance that would bring us together under the roof of St Patrick’s: none of us had a family or a home.

  We learned to survive without either of those things. Better still, we invented our own family and created our home. It was a family and a home we had chosen freely, and neither lies nor chance had any place there. The only father the seven of us ever knew was Mr Thomas Carter, with his speeches about the wisdom to be found in the pages of Dante and Virgil; and our only mother was the city of Calcutta, whose mysteries were concealed in the streets that lay beneath the stars of the Bengali Peninsula.

  The club we invented had a colourful name, the true origin of which was known only to Ben. He had christened the club at whim, although some of us had a sneaking suspicion that he’d borrowed the word from the old mail-order catalogue of some Bombay importer. Be that as it may, the Chowbar Society was set up at some point in our lives, after which the orphanage games seemed dull in comparison. By then we were cunning enough to slip out of the building in the small hours of the night, long after the venerable Vendela’s curfew, and make straight for our society’s headquarters – the top secret and supposedly haunted house which for decades had stood abandoned on the corner of Cotton Street and Brabourne Road, in the middle of the Black Town, just a few streets away from the Hooghly River.

  I have to admit that the ramshackle house we proudly called the Midnight Palace (in consideration of the hour when we held our meetings) was never really haunted. The rumours about its supernatural powers arose because of our subterfuge. One of our founding members, Siraj, a full-time asthmatic and learned expert on Calcutta’s tales of ghosts, apparitions and curses, hatched a convincingly sinister legend about an alleged former resident. This helped keep our secret hideaway free of intruders.

  The story, in short, was about an old tradesman who floated through the house wrapped in a white cloak. He had blazing red eyes and long wolfish fangs that rested over his lips, and he hungered after unsuspecting curious souls. The bit about the eyes and the teeth was, of course, Ben’s contribution, as he loved to concoct plots so gruesome they left Mr Carter’s classics – Sophocles and the gory Homer included – in the dust.

  Despite the humorous echoes of its name, the Chowbar Society was as select and strict as any of the clubs that filled the Edwardian buildings of central Calcutta, emulating their London namesakes; their elegant lounges, where members could vegetate, brandy in hand, were the birthright of the British male elite. Our surroundings may have been less splendid, but our aim was far nobler.

  The Chowbar Society had been founded with two firm objectives. The first was to guarantee each of its seven members the help, protection and unconditional support of the others, in any circumstance, danger or adversity. The second was to share the knowledge each of us acquired, so that we could equip ourselves for the day when we would have to face the world alone.

  Every member had sworn upon his own name and honour (we had no close relatives to swear by) to observe those two objectives and to keep the society a secret. During the seven years of its existence no new member was ever admitted. I lie. We made one exception, but to write about that now would be to get ahead of myself …

  Never was there a society whose members were more united, and whose oath carried such weight. The Chowbar Society was nothing like the clubs for wealthy gentlemen in the West End, for none of us had a home or a loved one to go to when we left the Midnight Palace. It was also very different from the ancient student societies in Cambridge, because it did admit women.

  So I will begin with the first woman who pledged her oath as a founder member of the Chowbar Society, although when the ceremony took place none of us (including the person I’m alluding to, who was nine at the time) thought of her as a woman. Her name was Isobel and, as she said herself, she had been born for the stage. Isobel dreamed of becoming the successor to Sarah Bernhardt, seducing audiences from Broadway to Shaftesbury Avenue and leaving the divas of the newly formed cinema industry unemployed, both in Hollywood and Bombay. She collected newspaper cuttings and theatre programmes, wrote her own plays (‘active monologues’ she called them) and performed them for us with great success. Most outstanding were her sketches about a femme fatale on the brink of the abyss. But, beneath all the extravagance and melodrama, Isobel possessed – with the possible exception of Ben – the best brain in the group.

  The best legs, however, belonged to Roshan. Nobody could run like Roshan, who had grown up in the streets of Calcutta under the tutelage of thieves, beggars and all kinds of other specimens from the jungle of poverty that flourished in the newly expanding areas to the south of the city. When the boy was eight, Thomas Carter brought him to St Patrick’s and, after a few escapes and returns, Roshan decided to stay with us. Among his many talents was that of locksmith. There wasn’t a lock on earth that wouldn’t yield to his skill.

  I’ve already spoken about Siraj, our specialist in haunted houses. Leaving aside his asthma, his pale complexion and poor health, Siraj possessed an encyclopedic memory, particularly when it came to sinister stories about the city, of which there were hundreds. For the ghost stories that enhanced our special evenings, Siraj was the researcher and Ben the narrator. From the ghostly rider of Hastings House to the spectral leader of the 1857 mutiny, including the spine-chilling episode of the so-called black hole of Calcutta (where over a hundred men suffocated, after being c
aptured in a siege at the old Fort William), there wasn’t a tall tale or gruesome incident that escaped Siraj’s archives. Needless to say, for the rest of us his passion was a cause for great joy and celebration. Unfortunately, however, Siraj had an almost unhealthy adoration for Isobel. At least once every six months his proposals for a future marriage – which were invariably refused – triggered a romantic storm within the group that aggravated the spurned lover’s asthma.

  Isobel’s affections belonged exclusively to Michael, a tall skinny boy who was quiet by nature and given to long inexplicable spells of melancholy. Michael had the dubious privilege of having known, and therefore of remembering, his parents. They had died during a flood of the Ganges Delta when an overloaded barge had capsized. Michael spoke little and was a good listener. There was only one way of deciphering his thoughts: by looking at the dozens of drawings he did during the day. Ben used to say that if there was more than one Michael in the world, he’d invest all his fortune – still to be made – in the paper business.

  Michael’s best friend was Seth, a strong Bengali boy with a serious expression who smiled about six times a year and even then with hesitation. Seth was a scholar of anything that came into his line of fire, a tireless devourer of Mr Carter’s classics, and keen on astronomy. When he wasn’t with us, he concentrated all his efforts on building a strange telescope, with which, according to Ben, you couldn’t even see the tips of your toes. Seth never appreciated Ben’s vaguely caustic sense of humour.

  Only Ben remains, and, although I’ve left him until the end, I still find it hard to talk about him. There was a different Ben for every day. His mood changed every half-hour and he’d go from long stretches of silence, a sad expression on his face, to periods of hyperactivity that ended up exhausting us all. One day he wanted to be a writer; the following day an inventor and a mathematician; the day after that a sailor or a deep-sea diver; the rest of the time it was all of those things with a few more added. Ben invented mathematical theories that even he didn’t manage to remember and wrote such bizarre tales of adventure that he ended up destroying them a week after they were finished, embarrassed at the thought that he had penned them. He machine-gunned us constantly with elaborate ideas and complex puns which he always refused to repeat. Ben was like a bottomless trunk, full of surprises, also of mystery, light and shadow. He was, and I suppose he still is, even though we haven’t seen one another in decades, my best friend.