A Corpse in Calcutta

By Allan Scarfe

When Phillip Cutler, a young Australian, takes a photograph in Calcutta he intrudes into a vortex of murder and political intrigue, the potential to trigger a war. His holiday turns into a terror-stricken flight across the plains of the Ganges and through the streets of Delhi.

From the President’s palace to the peasant’s pallet, no-one is what they seem. Cutler is deceived by both enemies and friends. Torn between two beautiful women – provocative Kay and secretive Annapurna – who can he trust?

• Language: English
• Publisher: DoctorZed Publishing
• Release date: Nov 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9780992390907

Book preview

GLOSSARY

CHAPTER 1

Even at 5.30 a.m. I had to queue outside Calcutta airport for a taxi, but I was so excited, so full of anticipations, that I didn’t mind the delay or the heat. In front of me a podgy Bengali mother kept screeching ‘Don’t do that!’ at two sullen children. I felt sorry she couldn’t enjoy life, because I was over the moon myself.

At the head of the queue a blue-uniformed policeman scowled at us travellers and our heaps of baskets, crates, water pots, bedding rolls and trunks tied up with rope. His shorts stirred in the slight breeze above his thin hairy legs. Occasionally he stamped the road with either of his huge black boots. Beyond him the city looked drab but I was keen to be there. I am the over-enthusiastic type.

From my newspaper Dr Mukhteer Allam, the President of the Global Reconstruction Bank, smiled at me. He had flown in a few hours earlier and the Rashtriya Vikas (National Development) Party had demonstrated against him. I had a quick flip through the inner pages fascinated by anything happening in India.

The pick-up area was U-shaped and the incoming taxis dropped their fares anywhere in it. If one cab at a time appeared the policeman could keep order and the queue leader chased it. If two or three came at once anybody raced for them. The disputes were vitriolic, both in pursuit and when the disgruntled tried to muscle back into the queue.

Being a long-legged six-footer, lightly loaded with overnight bag and camera, I enjoyed a sprint, jumping ahead of my competitors into an old Morris driven by a plump Sikh in a grubby turban. I waved to the queue as we took off and learned some new swearing.

On the footpaths dung fires dribbled breakfast smoke into the sun’s rays. I had him stop while I took photographs. I had promised some London friends to bring back enough photographs to do an exhibition with them so I took my pictures with all the zestful insensitive curiosity of the tourist.

My driver then rattled us into a stream of trucks, bullock carts and lambrettas crossing the Hoogly River suspension bridge. When the traffic stopped us I made the most of my holiday minutes with my camera again. I was beside myself with excitement at being back to see the places and people of my early childhood before my mother moved out from my father and took me to grandmother in Melbourne. I was like a young sheep-dog just let off the chain trying to see, sniff, chase, nip everything all at once and barking fit to burst. Here were people intent on their daily concerns and I knew what they were doing and why. Suddenly I felt a tourist no longer.

Impetuously, through the ironwork of the bridge, I photographed a woman and daughter in black saris rummaging for unburnt scraps of charcoal left in the ashes of old cooking fires along the sandy muck of the riverbank. I like watching people as they go about their chores. I tried for a picture of a wasted skeleton of a man, naked but for a loin cloth, pouring a libation of water to the sun, with the sun’s rays flickering off his brass pot as he tilted it. A thanks-for-being-alive picture.

After the business area of granite banks and plate-glass car showrooms we passed into the dormitory suburbs and I eagerly clicked on several cheerful-looking washermen either pounding garments in a brown pond or laying them out on the earth to dry. I thought of contrasting the shot with an interior view of a London laundromat and all its grumpy bored looks.

About four kilometres along Chatterjee Road the taxi hit a pothole. I was jerked forward and the engine gave out. The Sikh let the cab run without power until it lost momentum, then drew in slowly to the curb. He grinned obsequiously.

‘Only one moment to wait, Sahib. It is the wire has jumped out of the coil, for sure. I am just now fixing. You should not worry for it.’

He opened the bonnet. I got out, stretched, looked about. A few yards ahead of us a solitary sleeper was lying on the bitumen: a moving loneliness; a tragic level of destitution; a simple arresting composition. I felt shifty planning to make money by exhibiting another person’s homelessness. I knew my friend Dr Krishnaraj Chakravati would disapprove as I daresay I might if a visitor photographed Melbourne’s skid row instead of its botanical gardens.

However I rationalized that well-off people would never help folk in the third world unless they saw such sights. Setting my camera aperture I scuttled guiltily across the few yards to the sleeper watching his tiny reflection and the light-metre needle in my viewfinder. His lack of clothes fretted me. When I was about three paces from him I glanced directly at him. And forgot my photography.

He was stark naked and smeared with dried blood and flies. His eyes were light blue and sightless. He was a huge muscular man who had not starved to death. Someone had killed him. My stomach turned over.

Involuntarily I glanced behind, fearing the killers might still be there, but the Sikh was unconcernedly slamming down the bonnet. In the distance people were moving at a fester of small stalls; near me the street was empty and the houses gave no sign of occupants. As the body was partly hidden by the shadow of a high galvanised-iron fence it seemed possible to just walk away.

I took a last glimpse at his ginger hair and beard and the revolting flies and felt dreadfully sorry for him. Who had he been? Where were his family? By what criminal path of treachery or brutality had he come here? Would the police catch his murderers? For an instant I felt a sense of foreboding that this violence threatened me, too.

Taking refuge in an habitual action I automatically touched the lever which moved the film in my camera. It should have stuck fast but it moved freely. I must have clenched the shutter release with the shock of what I had seen. Accidentally I had photographed a murdered man.

As I could no longer pretend not to have been here I rashly decided to do him the only respect I could. I took some very careful pictures — the Police could have a copy, was my excuse — then got back soberly into the taxi.

My destination turned out to be an ugly house with walls of mould-discolored concrete rising out of the pavement where Mukherjee Road and Barakhamba Street intersected.

With an air of gallantry my driver opened my door, then argued for a tip for lifting out my bag. His shoes were mud-caked and cracked and he wore them without socks but his beard was oiled and combed back under his chin, held immaculately in a hairnet. My earlier up-beat mood had gone. I finished up my film on his jaunty cheerfulness. His chirpiness helped to lift my spirits.

CHAPTER 2

Krishnaraj’s door was down a cobbled alley which was spanned by a frayed rope with cotton saris and blouses hanging over it, still wet from washing. A servant girl left me looking at his brass plate attached to the unpainted door frame. I was boning up on his consulting hours when he bounded out in his pyjamas.

‘Whatever is the girl thinking of to leave a respected foreign guest waiting outside the door?’

I flung my arms warm-heartedly about his shoulders in a hug. He responded with equal demonstrativeness.

‘How are you, you sentimental, fatalistic Indian philosopher?’

‘How are you, you excitable, artless Aussie innocent? What a delight it is that you have come to my country and my home. You are looking spankingly healthy, Cuts.’

‘Cuts’ was his amused play on my name Phillip Cutler. He started it when he was studying in Melbourne and I told him about life in the raw in the schools of our western suburbs where punishment was ‘getting the cuts’ from our teacher’s strap.

‘Grovelling greetings, oh mighty Raja, King of the Orient.’ This was my retaliation on his name. Male bonding stuff.

He pointed at my overnight bag. ‘But what is this great baggage train?’

‘The elephants are bringing the rest.’

We had a friendly tug-of-war over who would carry my bag. Laughingly I let him win. He made the servant girl take it.

‘You will manage with the contents only of this minute satchel for all of your vacation in India? Amazing. It is years since we parted in Melbourne. You have forgotten your Hindi and Bengali no doubt?’

‘I hope not. But you can refresh me.’

‘I am now recalling my visits to your flat in Richmond and our conversations on the nature of truth as we walked along the Yarra River at the weekend.’

‘We used to watch the health freaks rowing.’

‘And I longed to see Mother Ganges.’

‘We first met at Veraswami’s Restaurant. Right? You ordered me something so damn spiced it took the top off my head.’

‘Thus losing you the small brain you had. You were so precipitate. You would not taste it a little first. Since then you had written me how your prime minister broke the pilots’ federation and you had to find a job in Europe.’

We went shoulder-to-shoulder along a z-shaped passage. The doors we passed had gaily-patterned draw curtains, some of which he pulled aside to show me the rooms behind them. I got an impression of bright rugs and cushions, of light bamboo or cane furniture, of thrifty comfort, of cheerful primrose-colored walls.

‘Yes. The pilots are all Yanks now in Aus. And the company directors. Globalization.’

‘Perhaps if your country becomes a republic like mine you could have an American for president.’

‘A film star maybe.’

‘You must meet our president, Cuts. I recommend this. People of all kinds make his darshan every morning.’

‘Why?’

‘He would inspire you.’

I shrugged.

The room I was to occupy had glassless barred windows that looked out on Barakhamba Street. My bed was a low wooden chownki covered with a thin cotton-filled mattress and a handwoven bedspread which depicted the palace of Jaipur. Krishnaraj made the servant open a chest of drawers, releasing a scent of sandalwood.

‘Put your travelling wardrobe here, Cuts. Leave your soiled clothes in your bag on the floor and she will take them later to the dhobi.’

He had her bring me an electric fan.

‘You will need this for later in the day, Cuts, when it gets hotter than Veraswami’s curry. This climate will be very trying for you. You will not be accustomed to the heat.’

‘Thanks, Raja. I’m not used to it. Incidentally here’s something I brought for you.’

He carefully unwrapped my gift.

‘Sorry the Parker pens are commercial but the desk set for holding them I made from pieces of red gum from the Murray River.’

I knew he wouldn’t thank me: it wasn’t his custom. But the way he self-consciously smiled and ran his fingertips sensuously around the hollows of my carving was all the appreciation I needed.

‘Carving, is this your present recreation, Cuts? But you have an excellent career I am hoping.’

‘I am now not an Australian but an international airline pilot on vacation.’

‘You fly 747s to the great capitals of the entire world? I am impressed. No, you are not old enough. Or sophisticated or pretentious enough. You are too naive and spontaneous.’

‘Your nose for the truth is uncanny. I can no longer tell a lie. I fly car-ferry planes across the Channel for EngAyr. Dover to Le Touquet. Britain-France, Britain-Belgium. International. I wasn’t lying.’

‘Simply taking me for a ride round the European Common Market. Will you come now to meet my parents? My father is the head of my family. They are waiting very anxiously to meet my guest.’ He ignored my need for a bath, shave and clean clothes. ‘Come now. I am anxious for this meeting to take place with my respected father.’

He led me to a lounge room and had the servant bring me a pot of tea, a plate of sliced bananas and pawpaw and a refrigerated mango which twinkled with droplets of condensing moisture. I was finishing my second cup of tea when his parents came in shyly.

Both were self-conscious and tongue-tied. His father was a heavy man with bushy eyebrows. He wore white kurta and dhoti. His mother was short and thin. Her sari was white. After greeting me formally with folded hands they stood in an embarrassed silence until Krishnaraj prevailed on them to sit but they only settled down after he and I did. They refused tea or food, then looked at me without knowing what to say until Krishnaraj explained that they felt they had an unpayable debt to me because I had befriended their only son while he had been taking his medical studies in a foreign land. To which they nodded. He added that they wished him also to say that they hoped I would be their house guest for some months. They nodded again.

I thanked them for their hospitality.

‘Your son did more for me than I did for him, truly,’ I said. ‘He helped me keep up my Indian languages.’

‘Yes, I am very proud of Cuts. He is speaking Hindustani and Bengali most fluently.’

They nodded appreciatively. I asked if they found speaking English difficult and wished I hadn’t. They looked flustered.

During the silence which followed a strikingly beautiful woman in an orange sari came in. She responded timidly to my standing up, then sat silently in the most inconspicuous place in the room while Krishnaraj’s father planned a sight-seeing itinerary for me around Calcutta. It seemed so discourteous not to include this woman in the conversation that I asked her if she were, like me, a friend of the family. But she did not reply.

‘She is my daughter-in-law,’ the old man explained. ‘She will not speak to you because she is in the presence of her parents-in-law. She will not speak to her husband, Krishnaraj, either.’

He sounded smug. I kept my protests to myself but my face must have showed disapproval.

‘You are surprised? But it is our family custom. It is not your custom?’

I side-stepped the issue. ‘I did not know that Krishnaraj had married. Was it just recently?’

‘Not really. You know, Lord Buddha brought about a revision of our marriage system and his reforms have remained our practice for two and a half thousand years. The ceremony has two parts: the true marriage which cannot be broken, beginning in the early life of the child, and the later ceremony, after which the girl goes to live in the home of husband’s parents. I had arranged my son’s marriage when he was a child. And she was. You are not married?’

‘No.’

I thought to myself that my wife would never have to be silent in front of her in-laws.

‘But you must be in your middle twenties. Is it too much individualism in Western people? Is self put before family, I wonder? Do they not appreciate the value of the family?’

‘I haven’t found anyone I fancied.’

‘Of course you do not have these matters arranged for you by your parents. To make these decisions for yourself when you are too young to be wise … Western customs are strange.’

I could not help glancing from Krishnaraj to his wife because I could not remember seeing such a contrast between spouses. She was lovely, with straight nose and long-lashed eyes. He was ugly. His nose was too large, too bulbous at the end, and it had a large mole on the right side. His cheekbones were too heavy. His head was not quite symmetrical: on the left side it was rounded and his ear lay flat but on the other side his skull was flatter and his ear stood out. He claimed this asymmetry had been caused when he had been a baby by a partiality for lying on his right side because of some goddess. And to cap all these ill-matched features his face in repose had a gloomy expression.

I wondered whether his appearance was telling against him in his practice or whether his patients would be able to sense his gentle kindness and conscientiousness. I was hoping he was doing well just when the servant entered to whisper to him that there was a patient asking for him.

Immediately he went out our gathering broke up. His consulting room was next to the lounge and we could hear his voice quietly questioning his patient.

A few minutes later he rejoined me in my bedroom as I was slipping a new film into my camera.

‘You have taken up photography lately, Cuts?’

‘A few of us hope to have a show when I return to London, Raja. I started the moment I left Heathrow and I’ve been through half a dozen films already around Bombay. But I’m afraid my enthusiasm got me a big shock in Chatterjee Road on my way here.’

‘What big shock?’

‘Oh, it was nothing.’

‘It must have been. Do not dismiss the truth. Tell me,’ he coaxed the disagreeable memory from me.

‘I unwittingly photographed a dead man. Just lying in the street. Then I took more pictures of him.’

‘It was a big shock to you? There are times, you know, when I feel ashamed to eat and dress as well as I do while other unfortunate souls in our city expire from malnutrition. It is a mismanagement of society to …’

‘No, he hadn’t starved. He was well built. He’d been killed.’

‘How distressing for you. How killed? Stabbed? Shot?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I do not wish to sound clinical or morbid but — head beaten in? Strangled? Although you are a layman …’

‘He’d been beaten about, but …’

‘But it did not seem that his injuries had killed him? His wounds did not seem fatal ones?’

‘No.’

‘Were there marks on his arms? He might have been a drug addict.’

I tried to remember his arms but failed. ‘He’s the first dead person I’ve seen,’ I protested.

‘Possibly he had taken poison or been poisoned.’

‘How the hell would I know if he’d been poisoned? I’m no doctor. He was just lying in the bloody gutter.’

‘Of course,’ he backed off.

‘You can think scientifically about it, Raja, if you want to. I’d rather forget it.’

‘That is quite understandable. But it will help you to talk about it, you know.’

I doubted it but he persisted, ‘Who was he, do you think?’

‘I have no idea. I’ve just arrived here.’

‘You probably know much more than you consciously realise. Income? Caste? Religion? Region? What did his clothes tell you?’

‘He was naked. There was nothing to identify him.’

‘Young or old? Black hair or grey hair?’

‘Middle-aged thickness. Ginger hair. Staring blue eyes. Makes me shiver. A light complexion.’

‘He could have been a Pathan. What do you think might have been his occupation? Laborer? Army Officer? Had he soft or hard hands?’

‘His hands weren’t calloused but he did have a cauliflower ear. Perhaps he had been a heavy-weight boxer.’

‘Very observant. Very logical. Good. Did he look like a servant?’

‘He had an intelligent face. Brains and brawn, I’d say. I wouldn’t mind having someone like him, if he was alive, as a bodyguard.’

Krishnaraj nibbled thoughtfully on his thumbnail. ‘Is it possible that he could have been some VIP’s bodyguard?’ For some reason he avoided looking at me. Which was odd.

‘Why all the questions? Is this all for my peace of mind or have you some suspicion of who it was?’

‘No, no. This is a vast city of people. No, no.’ It came out a fraction too quickly. He slid back into his casually philosophic tone. ‘A wild guess just entered my mind. An hypothesis which cannot be substantiated.’

Again his eyes dodged mine. But he quickly turned his smile full on. ‘You suffer for your kind heart, Cuts. You must take another cup of tea for your nerves. But I am sure it has helped you to talk about it.’

‘Yes, sure,’ I said. I could hardly admit that his pestering had made me wonder whether on his home ground he was still the close friend I remembered.

‘Let me be of service. Surely you do not want to become involved. I could explain all about it to the Police. It will be easier for me than for you. I am known in this locality. And you would be able to put it out of your mind if you knew the authorities were dealing with it.’

‘Yes. I’d be grateful,’ I leapt at his offer.

‘Then just now I am doing.’ When he returned from telephoning he assured me, ‘The Police are handling the matter. They do not need to see you because I am being responsible for you while you are in my country. I said you could give them photographs after you have your films developed. I recommend Regal Studios.

‘So now you can completely enjoy your vacation. My respected father has already mapped out your first two weeks of sight-seeing. I hope you will not mind humoring him.’

He went back to his consulting room while I cleaned up and changed and although I was relieved I suddenly found it odd that he could have arranged for the Police to not see me. Obviously he knew something that I didn’t.

Then his father had their chauffeur bring out the family car and whisk me away into the city. He took me cruising past shops, parks, the High Court, a Museum, the river, a huge horrible statue of Queen Victoria, First Empress of India. I bought a silver service for a belated wedding present and we ended up at the Regal Photograph Studios.

‘It is a most reliable firm, Phillip Sahib,’ he reassured me.

It did not look reliable. It was nothing more than a door in a wall. The Regal sign had almost faded away and the imitation Kodak film above the door was hanging skew-whiff from one rusty screw.

Oh hell, I thought. My films were precious. I could have them processed back in England. But I’d worry whether the heat was spoiling them or whether I’d been getting my exposures correct.

‘Most reliable,’ he persisted.

To enter the most reliable firm we mounted three steps over a gutter that was half-choked with black and green slime. The shop was wardrobe-sized, its walls freckled with faded portraits of Gandhi, Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose. The proles were represented by sentimental and olde worlde brides, children and melancholy walrus moustaches.

Nevertheless it did rowdy jostling business. Customers jammed the space and I was irritated by fellows who arrived after me but pushed in