The Midnight Palace Read online

  ‘THERE WAS A TIME when I too was young and did all the things young people are expected to do: marry, have children, get into debt, become disappointed and give up the dreams and principles you have always sworn to uphold. In a word, I became old. Even so, fate was generous to me, or at least that’s what I thought at the beginning: it joined my life to that of a man about whom the best and worst you could say was that he was a good person. I can’t deny it, he wasn’t exactly suave. I remember my sisters sniggering at him when he came to the house. He was rather clumsy and shy and looked as if he’d spent the last ten years of his life locked up in a library – hardly the kind of man any girl your age dreams of, Sheere.

  ‘My suitor was a teacher at a state school in South Calcutta. His pay was miserable and his clothes were in line with his pay. Every Saturday he would come and pick me up wearing the same suit, the only one he had, which he reserved for school meetings and for going out with me. It took six years before he could afford another one, although he never looked good in suits: he didn’t have the right frame.

  ‘My two sisters married smart good-looking young men who treated your grandfather with disdain and, behind his back, would throw me suggestive looks which I was supposed to interpret as invitations to enjoy the pleasures of a real man.

  ‘Years later, those lazy good-for-nothings ended up living off the charity of my husband, but that’s another story. Although he could see right through them – he was always able to look into the soul of anyone he dealt with – he didn’t refuse to support the bloodsuckers and pretended to have forgotten how they had mocked and scorned him when he was young. I wouldn’t have helped them but, as I said, my husband was a good person. Perhaps too good.

  ‘Unfortunately his health was fragile, and he left me early on, one year after the birth of our only daughter, Kylian. I had to bring her up on my own and try to teach her everything her father would have wanted her to learn. Kylian was the light that illuminated my life after the death of your grandfather. She inherited her kind nature from him, and her instinct for seeing into the hearts of others. But where your grandfather was forever clumsy and shy, Kylian radiated brightness and elegance. Her beauty began in her gestures, in her voice, in the way she moved. As a child, her words enchanted visitors and passers-by as if they were a magic spell. I remember watching her charm the merchants in the bazaar when she was only ten. It seemed to me that my girl was like a swan that had somehow emerged from the ugly duckling that was my husband. His spirit lived within her, in the most insignificant of her gestures and in the way she would sometimes stand in the porch of this house and stare quietly at the people going by, then look at me, her face deadly serious, and ask me why there were so many unfortunates in the world.

  ‘Soon everyone in the Black Town began to refer to her by the nickname she’d been given by a Bombay photographer: the Princess of Light. And it wasn’t long before would-be princes began to crawl out of the woodwork. Those were wonderful days, when she shared with me the absurd secrets her elegantly attired suitors confided in her, the dreadful poems they wrote to her and a whole collection of anecdotes which, had the situation gone on much longer, might have led us to believe that this city was full of nothing but halfwits. But soon a man appeared on the scene who was destined to change everything: your father, Sheere, the most intelligent, and also the strangest, man I have ever known.

  ‘In those days, as today, the vast majority of marriages were arranged between families, like a contract in which the wishes of the future spouses carry no weight at all. Most traditions reflect the ills of a society. All my life I had sworn that the day Kylian got married she would do so to someone she had chosen freely.

  ‘The first time your father came through this door, he seemed the complete opposite of the dozens of swaggering peacocks that were forever hanging around your mother. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, his words were razor-sharp and did not invite a reply. He was kind and, when he wanted, he could display a strange charm that seduced slowly but surely. Even so, your father was always distant and cold with everyone. Everyone, that is, except your mother. In her company he became a different person, vulnerable and almost childlike. I never discovered which of the two he really was, and I suppose your mother took the secret to her grave.

  ‘On the few occasions when he deigned to speak to me, he didn’t say much. At last he decided to ask for my consent to marry your mother, and I enquired how he intended to provide for her and what his situation was. My years on the brink of poverty with your grandfather had taught me to protect Kylian against it. I was convinced that there’s nothing like an empty stomach for destroying the myth that hunger is a noble condition.

  ‘Your father looked at me – keeping his real thoughts to himself, as he always did – and replied that he was an engineer and a writer. He said he was trying to obtain a post with a British construction company and that a Delhi publisher had paid him an advance on a manuscript he’d sent. All of which, once you cleared away the long words with which your father laced his talk when it suited him, smelled to me of deprivation and hardship. I told him so. He smiled, and taking my hand gently in his, he whispered these words I’ll never forget: “Mother, this is the first and last time I’ll say this. From now on, your daughter and I are in charge of our own future, and that includes providing for her and carving out a life for myself. Nobody, alive or dead, will ever be allowed to interfere. On that matter you must rest assured and trust in the love I have for her. But if worry still gives you sleepless nights, don’t let a single word, gesture or action sully the bond which, with or without your consent, will unite us for ever, because eternity would not be long enough for you to regret it.”

  ‘Three months later they were married, and I never spoke to your father in private again. The future proved him right, and soon he began to make a name for himself as an engineer, without abandoning his passion for literature. They moved into a house not far from here – which was demolished years ago – while he conceived what was going to be their dream home, a real palace which he designed down to the minutest detail. He planned to retire there with your mother. Nobody could imagine then what was about to happen.

  ‘I never really got to know him. He didn’t give me the chance, nor did he seem to be interested in opening up to anyone but your mother. He intimidated me, and when I was with him I felt quite incapable of approaching him or trying to win him over. It was impossible to know what he was thinking. I used to read his books, which your mother would bring when she came to see me, and I’d study them carefully in an effort to discover clues that might allow me to penetrate the maze of his mind. I never succeeded.

  ‘Your father was a mysterious man who never talked about his family or his past. Maybe that’s why I was never able to foresee the threat that hovered over him and my daughter, a threat born of that dark and unfathomable past. He never let me help him and, when disaster struck, he was as alone as he’d always been, locked in the fortress of solitude he’d made for himself. Only one person ever held the keys, during the time she shared with him: Kylian.

  ‘But your father, like all of us, had a past, and from that past a figure emerged who would bring darkness and tragedy upon our family.

  ‘When your father was young and roamed the streets of Calcutta, dreaming about numbers and mathematical formulae, he met a lonely orphan boy of his own age. At the time your father lived in the most abject poverty and, like so many children in this city, he caught one of the fevers that claim thousands of lives every year. During the rainy season the monsoon unleashed powerful storms over the Bengali Peninsula, flooding the entire Ganges Delta and the surrounding area. Year after year the salt lake that still lies to the east of the city would overflow; and when the rain ceased and the water level subsided, all the dead fish were exposed to the sun, producing a cloud of poisonous fumes which winds from the mountains in the north would then blow over Calcutta, spreading illness and death like some infernal plague.

  ‘
That year your father was a victim of the deadly winds and he would have died had it not been for his friend Jawahal, who looked after him for twenty days in a hovel made of mud and burnt wood on the banks of the Hooghly River. When he recovered, your father swore he would always protect Jawahal and would share with him whatever the future might bring, because now his life also belonged to his friend. It was a child’s oath. A pact of blood and honour. But there was something your father didn’t know: Jawahal, his guardian angel, who was barely nine years old at the time, carried in his veins an illness far more terrible than the one that had almost taken your father’s life. An illness that would manifest itself much later, at first imperceptibly, then as surely as a death sentence: madness.

  ‘Years later your father was told that Jawahal’s mother had set fire to herself in front of her son as a sacrificial act to the goddess Kali, and that his mother’s mother had ended her days in a miserable cell in a lunatic asylum in Bombay. Those two events were only links in the long chain of horrors and misfortunes that characterised the history of the family. But your father was a strong person, even as a boy, and he took on the responsibility of protecting his friend, whatever the outcome of his terrible inheritance.

  ‘It all went well until Jawahal turned eighteen, when he cold-bloodedly murdered a wealthy trader in the bazaar, just because the man refused to sell him a large medallion on the grounds that Jawahal’s appearance made the trader doubt his solvency. Your father kept Jawahal hidden in his home for months and put his own life and future at risk by protecting him from the police, who were searching for him all over town. He succeeded, but that incident was only the start of it. A year later, on the night of the Hindu new year celebrations, Jawahal set fire to a house where about a dozen old women lived, then sat outside watching the flames until the beams collapsed and the building turned to ash. This time not even your father’s cunning was able to save Jawahal from the hands of justice.

  ‘There was a trial – long and terrible – at the end of which Jawahal was given a life sentence for his crimes. Your father did what he could to help him, spending all his savings on lawyers, sending clean clothes to the prison where his friend was being held, bribing the guards so they wouldn’t torment him. But the only thanks he got from Jawahal were words of hatred. He accused your father of having denounced him, of abandoning him and wanting to get rid of him. He reproached him for breaking the oath they had made years earlier and swore revenge because, as he shouted from the dock when his sentence was read out, half your father’s life belonged to him.

  ‘Your father hid this secret in the depths of his heart and never wanted your mother to find out about it. Time erased all trace of those events. After the wedding, the first years of married life and your father’s early success, it became just a memory, a remote episode buried in the past.

  ‘I remember when your mother became pregnant. Your father turned into a different person, a stranger. He bought a puppy and said he was going to train it to become a watchdog, turn it into the best nanny for his future son. And he didn’t stop talking about the house he was going to build, the plans he had for the future, a new book …

  ‘A month later Lieutenant Michael Peake, one of your mother’s former suitors, knocked on the door with news that would sow terror in their lives: Jawahal had set fire to the secure prison block where he was being held, and had escaped. Before fleeing he’d slit his cellmate’s throat and had used his blood to write a single word on the wall: REVENGE.

  ‘Peake promised that he would personally look for Jawahal and protect the couple from any possible threat. Two months went by with no sign of the escaped prisoner. Until your father’s birthday.

  ‘Just before sunrise a parcel was delivered to him by a beggar. It contained a large medallion – the piece that had led Jawahal to commit his first murder – and a note. In it Jawahal explained that after spying on them for a few weeks and discovering that your father was now a successful man with a dazzling wife, he wished them well and would perhaps soon pay them a visit, so that they could “share what belonged to them both, like brothers”.

  ‘The following days were strewn with panic. One of the sentries Peake had employed to guard the house at night was found dead. Your father’s dog was discovered at the bottom of the well in the courtyard. And every morning the walls of the house were daubed with new threats, written in blood, which Peake and his men were powerless to prevent.

  ‘Those were difficult days for your father. His finest work had just been built, the Jheeter’s Gate Station on the western bank of the Hooghly. It was an impressive, revolutionary steel structure, the culmination of his project to establish a railway network throughout the entire country, to encourage development of local trade and modernise the provinces so that they could eventually overcome domination by the British. That was always one of his obsessions, and he could spend hours speaking passionately about it, as if it were some divine mission he’d been entrusted with. The official opening of Jheeter’s Gate was taking place at the end of the week, and to mark the occasion it was decided to charter a train that would transport three hundred and sixty-five orphans to their new home in western India. They came from the most deprived backgrounds, and your father’s project would mean a whole new life for them. It was something he had pledged to do from the very start, his life’s dream.

  ‘Your mother was desperate to attend the ceremony for a few hours, and she assured your father that the protection offered by Lieutenant Peake and his men would be sufficient to keep her safe.

  ‘When your father climbed into the train and got the engine going that was supposed to take the children to their new home, something unexpected happened. The fire. A terrible blaze spread through the various levels of the station, fanning out along the train’s carriages so that as it entered the tunnel, the train was transformed into a rolling inferno, a molten tomb for the children who travelled inside. Your father died that night, trying to save the orphans, while his dreams vanished for ever amid the flames.

  ‘When your mother heard the news she almost lost you. But fate grew weary of sending misfortune to your family, and you were saved. Three days later, when she was only a few days from giving birth, Jawahal and his men burst into the house and after proclaiming that the Jheeter’s Gate tragedy had been their doing, they took your mother away.

  ‘Lieutenant Peake managed to survive the assault and followed them to the very bowels of the station, which by then was an accursed place nobody had set foot in since the night of the tragedy. Jawahal had left a note in the house swearing he’d kill your mother and the child she was about to deliver. But something happened that not even Jawahal had expected. It was not one child, but two. Twins. A boy and a girl. You two …’

  ARYAMI BOSE TOLD THEM how Peake had managed to rescue them and bring them to her home, and how she had decided to separate them and hide them from their parents’ murderer … but neither Sheere nor Ben was listening to her any longer. Ian stared at the white faces of his best friend and the girl. They hardly blinked; the revelations they had heard from the old woman’s lips seemed to have turned them into statues. Ian heaved a deep sigh and wished he’d not been the one selected to attend this strange family reunion. He felt extremely uncomfortable, an intruder in the drama that was unfolding around his friends.

  All the same, Ian swallowed his dismay and focused his thoughts on Ben. He tried to imagine the storm Aryami’s account must have unleashed inside him and he cursed the abruptness with which fear and exhaustion had made the old lady reveal events that could potentially have consequences far greater than they imagined. For the moment he tried not to think of what Ben had told him that morning about his vision of a blazing train. The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were multiplying with terrifying speed.

  He recalled the dozens of times Ben had asserted that they, the members of the Chowbar Society, were people without a past. Ian was afraid that Ben’s encounter with his own history in the gloom of that derelict house migh
t cause him irreparable damage. They had known each other since they were small, and Ian was familiar with Ben’s episodes of melancholy and realised it was always better to support him without asking any questions or trying to read his mind. Judging from what he knew of his friend, the impressive front behind which Ben usually hid his feelings must have suffered a tremendous blow. And he was sure Ben would never want to speak about it.

  Ian placed a hand gently on Ben’s shoulder, but his friend didn’t seem to notice.

  Ben and Sheere, who only a few hours earlier had felt a strong bond growing between them, now seemed incapable of looking at one another, as if the new cards dealt in the game had given them an unfamiliar modesty, a primal fear of exchanging even the simplest glance.

  Aryami looked anxiously at Ian. In the room silence reigned. The old woman’s eyes seemed to be begging them for forgiveness, the pardon granted the bearer of bad news. Ian tilted his head slightly, signalling to Aryami that they should leave the room. The old lady hesitated for a few seconds, but Ian stood up and offered her his hand. She accepted his help and followed him to the adjoining room, leaving Ben and Sheere alone. Ian stopped in the doorway and turned towards his friend.

  ‘We’ll be outside,’ he murmured.

  Without looking up Ben nodded.

  THE MEMBERS OF THE Chowbar Society were wilting in the crushing heat of the courtyard when they saw Ian appear through the front door, together with the old woman. The two exchanged a few words. Aryami nodded wearily and then sought the shade of an old carved-stone veranda. Ian, his expression severe, which his friends took to be a bad sign, walked over to the group and stood in the shady spot they had left for him. Aryami watched them from a few metres away, a doleful expression on her face.