City of Ghosts (17 page)

‘
Burn them or die!
' threatened Pritam.

‘
Burn them!
' insisted Sucha and Rana. ‘
Remember Ram Singh!
'

‘
BURN THE DOGS! BURN THE DOGS!
' sang the mob.

Jeevan looked up to the heavens and begged forgiveness from the cold grey clouds and the sunless, pitiless sky. With Pritam's knife at his side, he doused the two innocent men with the foul-smelling liquid. When the
can was empty he dropped it. Pritam produced matches and ordered Jeevan to strike one.

‘
Put the British on the pyre!
' he screamed; flecks of saliva flew out of his mouth, as thick and gelatinous as the kerosene Jeevan had poured onto the poor men at his feet.

‘
LIGHT IT!
' screamed the mob, united as one, an insatiable predator.

Jeevan, knowing that he would either send the men to their Maker or join them on their journey, lit the match and let it fall . . .

An hour after they had left their little room, Pritam's gang stood by a telegraph pole on the railway line to the west of the city. All along it the telegraph lines were being cut. Amritsar was being closed off from the outside world and they were playing their part. Jeevan watched the skinny Rana Lal as he climbed the pole and began to hack at the wires with a machete. He worked quickly; when he was done, he shouted in defiance: ‘
India zindabaad!
'

Jeevan turned away.

‘You seem troubled, brother,' he heard Pritam say.

Jeevan refused to look at him. ‘I'm fine,' he insisted.

‘I do not think so. You wear the look of someone who is in shock.'

He shrugged. ‘I just don't understand,' he admitted, despite his fear of Pritam. ‘What have we achieved today?'

Pritam put an arm around his shoulder. ‘No one said it would be easy,' he said. ‘The British have forced us into these actions. Do you not think that I would be the first to welcome a peaceful transition?'

Jeevan looked into Pritam's eyes. Had he been wrong about him? Was there, hidden deep within, a heart? The answer was swift and piercing. As Jeevan looked into Pritam's face, searching for some small hint of compassion, he saw only hatred.

‘We do not belong to these people,' continued Pritam. ‘We are not animals to be bought and sold. We can't be traded or forced to do things that go against our wishes—'

‘But we killed innocent men. Men who did nothing to hold us down—'

Pritam grasped Jeevan in an iron grip, fingers digging deep into his flesh. ‘There
are
no innocents,' he said with a sardonic smile. ‘This is the lesson we must learn . . .'

He let his words hang in the cool evening air for a moment. ‘We
must
learn or die,' he finished, once again leaving Jeevan in no doubt as to his choices. ‘Do you understand me, brother?'

Jeevan nodded.

‘Are you sure? Because I will not tell you again. There will be no more sobbing and crying – that is a child's way. Be a man and stand up for your country . . . your family.'

Jeevan nodded again.

‘Stand up or lie down and die, just like you did when
your own mother died,' said Pritam, reinforcing his point and sending a dagger of pain through Jeevan's heart. ‘And trust me, brother. If you let me down again, you
will
join the rest of them.'

The shudder that rocked Jeevan seemed to emanate from his soul. It sent wave after wave of electricity up and down his spine. He had been betrayed by Hans Raj. How else could Pritam have known of his mother's death and the despair and helplessness it had caused in his heart? Something snapped loose inside his head and he set himself a new task. He nodded for a third time and forced out his words.

‘I won't let you down again,' he lied. ‘You have my word.'

‘Good, good,' replied Pritam. ‘Now, let's get back to the city. The
goreh
will try and rescue their own and get them to the fort. We can't allow that to happen.'

Jeevan stayed at the back of the group, biding his time. He knew now that he
did
have a choice – just one. He had to get away. Everything he had been told, everything that had led him to this day – it had all been lies. Nothing the gang had done would help India to be free. They hadn't killed a single soldier or captain or general. They hadn't taken a single piece of ground the British cared about. All they had done was set fire to their own city and kill innocents along the way.

Jeevan found himself thinking of his friend Gurdial; and of the soldier he had been so quick to judge, Bissen Singh. One was a
real
friend, the other a
real
soldier.
Jeevan realized that he was neither: despite the smiling faces of his so-called family, he was caught in a trap, surrounded on all sides by evil intent. How foolish he had been to believe their honey-soaked words about love and family. His need to belong had led him down a dirty, immoral and dangerous path, and all because evil men had spoken the words they knew he'd wanted to hear. Smiling faces, he told himself, sometimes hid rotten souls.

HMP Pentonville, London,

13 July 1940, 8.55 a.m.

Udham Singh (aka Ram Mohammed Singh Azad)

I can hear them coming. I know their footsteps. Uncle Tom is heavy. His feet fall like those of a stubborn water buffalo and his breath escapes his throat in short, violent rasps. Albert, the other hangman, is slight and seems to smell of cough mixture. If I wanted I could snap his neck with one hand. But I have no wish to do such a thing any more. I am ready to meet my Maker, and I have done enough killing. I do not want to think of such things in the five minutes that remain to me.

My waking dreams are continually filled with the faces of those who died in the massacre. They do not leave me alone. I see them all – the women, the children. A river of blood flows from the killing field.
The drains are full of bodies. I can see a small child, a girl, wandering through the haze, clutching her rag doll. I want to reach out to her, to hold her, to tell her everything will be fine . . . But nothing will ever be the same again. Not for me. Not for her . . .

By the time I was done helping, no one was left – no dead and no injured. There were bodies in the well but we had to wait until daybreak to retrieve them, and even then we only managed to pull out a few. Those people are nothing but ghosts now. They swim around inside my head and disturb my sleep. They poke me with their bony fingers and scream at me with their disembodied voices. Soon I will join them and become what they became. I too will become one of the ghosts of Amritsar.

When they took me into the orphanage, my eyes were swollen with tears. For many years after she died, I refused to believe that my mother was dead. It took the massacre to make me realize that she was truly gone. And then all I did was replace one with another. India became my mother, and my sole reason for living was vengeance; I let ice fill my soul. I did not wish to become a murderer, but Life and Fate conspired and here I am, awaiting the hangman's noose.

Let no one be mistaken. I go to my end with no fear. I am not about to die. Death is for those who do not believe – let them become food for maggots. When the last breath is gone from my body, my soul
will leave this place and return to my home – to the golden land of the five rivers. And finally, after so many years, perhaps I will find my resting place. God knows, it has escaped me until now. I have spent this life trying to find my place. And now I know where it is. Hurry, Mr Hangman, and help me to reach it. I do not wish to wait a second longer.

WHENEVER THE DREAMS
came, they drenched Bissen Singh in sweat. And this morning was no exception. He sat upright in bed, like a corpse on a funeral pyre, every muscle in his wiry frame taut. His head pounded in time with the gunfire of his dreams. Round after round, shell after shell, a thunderous cacophony of destruction and death, the smell of gunpowder like a phantom in his senses. Perspiration dripped from his brow, and his right leg and buttock throbbed with pain, where the grenade had torn away flesh and shattered bone four years earlier.

The images that haunted him receded to wherever dreams lived. But he could still make out the faces of the men he had killed, and of those who had died alongside him. The final image, frozen in his mind, was like a rose in the early morning English dew. It was her face, her smile, her eyes . . .

Two hours later Bissen Singh woke for the second time, the noise of the bustling streets rousing him from yet another dream. He sat up, swung his legs over the edge of his bed and shook his head free of explosions and gunfire. The wailing of dying young men calling for their mothers rang in his ears. And then it was all gone except for the continuous low-level ringing, which he had carried with him from the Western Front, via Brighton and Cape Town, and home again to the land of the five rivers. The air around him was thick with his own smell and that of rotting onions, and it brought back the past once more. He stood up and stretched before bending over and touching his toes as his back popped and cracked. Then he walked across the dirt floor to the wooden shutters and opened them. The world flooded into his small room, making his grey eyes squint.

Out in the street the sun was already beating down, uncomfortably warm for the time of year. Bissen Singh made his way through the narrow lanes of old Amritsar, heading for the post office. More in hope than expectation. The hope of a letter, a note. Something. Anything. All around him traders hawked their wares and people went about their business. Children and animals wandered the mazy paths, not caring where they went. Colours assaulted his eyes; the smell of dung and dust and sweat ate into his nasal lining. Amritsar, the city of his youth. A city that had become alien to him upon his
return from the war. He heard the beeping of a horn and stepped aside to let a car pass. Its brakes squealed as a cow walked right into its path.

‘Damned animals!' shouted the British officer sitting in the back. He had grey hair and a thick black moustache. On the seat next to him were two rifles and a
lathi
.

Bissen looked at him. The officer, General Reginald Dyer, acknowledged the look, a slight nod of the head – a mark of respect for his exploits on behalf of his king and emperor. At least that's what Bissen tried to believe. The truth, whatever that was, held no meaning for him any more.
His
truth – the thing he wanted to believe in most of all – was thousands of miles away. In another world. In another lifetime perhaps.

‘
Chall, chall!
' demanded General Dyer.

The driver, a rotund, red-faced police officer called Plomer, made no reply, but set off down the narrow lane once more,
pap-pap-papping
on the horn as he went. Bissen watched them leave through a cloud of red dust, wondering what they were doing travelling through the streets without an armed escort. Amritsar was in open rebellion, the riots of two days earlier lending an edge of menace to the city. Four
goreh
had been killed and many injured.

But then again, Reginald Dyer was no ordinary British officer. More Indian than English in all regards bar the colour of his skin and the elevated position this gave him, Dyer was arrogantly confident of the respect
Amritsaris had for him. No other British officer would have dared to venture along the back streets at such a tense time. But then no other British officer had such an admiration for Sikhs, as far as Bissen knew.

By the time he had reached the post office he had seen the devastation caused by the riots. The managers of the National Bank had been doused in kerosene and set alight – both dead. Shops all across the city had been looted and destroyed, with people on both sides beaten indiscriminately.

‘Such an evil thing,
bhai
,' commented Gurnam Lal, a cloth weaver whom Bissen bumped into outside his shop.

Bissen listened as Gurnam told him what had happened elsewhere in the city – or at least what he had heard.

‘These people,' said Bissen, shaking his head. ‘They are like dogs that shit in their own basket and roll around in it—'

‘
Who?
' asked Gurnam. ‘The
goreh
?'

Bissen sighed. ‘No, Gurnam Lal-ji – the
Punjabis
. Tell me – how did it hurt the Empire that these so-called revolutionaries burned down their own city?'

‘But—'

Bissen shook his head. ‘I don't wish to talk of this any more.'

Just then, Gurnam's wife, a delicate, petite woman called Gian, came out of their open-fronted shop. ‘
Sat-sri-akaal
,' she said to Bissen.

‘
Phabbi-ji
,' offered Bissen, smiling.

‘Tell me, young man,' she teased. ‘How old are you now?'

‘The same as I was yesterday and the day before that and the one before that too,' he replied.