Sea of Poppies (13 page)

But even more than the love-making, he liked these moments afterwards, when she lay spent on the bed, like a dancer after a dizzying tihai, with her sari and her dupattas scattered around her, their loops and knots passing over and around her torso and her limbs. There was never time, in the urgent preliminaries to the first love-making, to properly undress: his own six-yard-long dhoti would wind itself through her nine-yard sari, forming patterns that were even more intricate than the interleaving of their limbs; only afterwards was there the leisure to savour the pleasures of a slowly conjured nakedness. Like many dancers, Elokeshi had a fine voice and could sing exquisite thumris: as she hummed, Neel would unwrap the garments from her limbs, lingering over each part of her body as his fingers bared them to his eyes and his lips: her powerful, arched ankles, with their tinkling silver anklets, her sinuous thighs, with their corded muscles, the downy softness of her mound, the gentle curve of her belly and the upswell of her breasts. And then, when every shred of clothing had been peeled away from both their bodies, they would start again, on their second bout of love-making, long, languid and lasting.

Today Neel had barely started to disentangle Elokeshi's limbs from the knotted cocoon of her clothing, when there was an untimely interruption in the form of a second altercation in the gangway outside the door: once again, the three girls were holding Parimal back from bringing news to his master.

Let him come in, Neel snapped in annoyance. He pulled a dupatta over Elokeshi, as the door was opening, but made no move to reattach his own disarranged clothing. Parimal had been his personal bearer and dresser since he was of an age to walk; he had bathed him and clothed him through the years of his childhood; on the day of Neel's wedding, it was he who had prepared the twelve-year-old boy for his first night with his bride, instructing him in
what had to be done: there was no aspect of Neel's person that was unfamiliar to Parimal.

Forgive me, huzoor, Parimal said as he stepped inside. But I thought you should know: Burra-Burnham-sahib has arrived here. He is on the ship right now. If the other sahibs are coming to dinner, then what about him?

The news took Neel by surprise, but after a moment's thought, he nodded: You're right – yes, he must be invited too. Neel pointed to a gown-like garment hanging on a peg: Bring me my choga.

Parimal fetched the choga and held it open while Neel stepped out of bed and slipped his arms into its sleeves. Wait outside, Neel said: I'm going to write another note for you to deliver to the ship.

When Parimal had left the room, Elokeshi threw off her covers. What's happened? she said, sleepily blinking her eyes.

Nothing, said Neel. I just have to write a note. Stay where you are. It won't take long.

Neel dipped his quill in an inkpot and scrawled a few words, but only to change his mind and start again. His hands became a little unsteady as he wrote out a line expressing his pleasure at the prospect of welcoming Mr Benjamin Burnham on the Raskhali budgerow. He stopped, took a deep breath and added: ‘Your arrival is indeed a happy coincidence, and it would have pleased my father, the late Raja, who was, as you know, a great believer in signs and omens . . .'

Some twenty-five years before, when his trading house was still in its infancy, Mr Benjamin Burnham had come to see the old Raja with an eye to leasing one of his properties as an office: he needed a Dufter but was short on capital, he said, and would have to defer the payment of the rent. Unbeknownst to Mr Burnham, while he was presenting his case, a white mouse had appeared under his chair – hidden from the trader, but perfectly visible to the zemindar, it sat still until the Englishman had had his say. A mouse being the familiar of Ganesh-thakur, god of opportunities and remover of obstacles, the old zemindar had taken the visitation to be an indication of divine will: not only had he allowed Mr Burnham to defer his rent for a year, he had also imposed the condition that the
Raskhali estate be allowed to invest in the fledgling agency – the Raja was a shrewd judge of people, and in Benjamin Burnham he had recognized a coming man. Of what the Englishman's business would consist, the Raja made no inquiry: he was a zemindar after all, not a bania in a bazar, sitting cross-legged on a countertop.

It was on decisions like these that the Halders had built their fortunes over the last century and a half. In the era of the Mughals, they had ingratiated themselves with the dynasty's representatives; at the time of the East India Company's arrival, they had extended a wary welcome to the newcomers; when the British went to war against the Muslim rulers of Bengal, they had lent money to one side and sepoys to the other, waiting to see which would prevail. After the British proved victorious, they had proved as adept at the learning of English as they had previously been in the acquisition of Persian and Urdu. When it was to their advantage, they were glad to shape their lives to the world of the English; yet they were vigilant always to prevent too deep an intersection between the two circles. The inner determinations of the white mercantile community, and its private accountings of profit and opportunity, they continued to regard with aristocratic contempt – and never more so than where it concerned men like Benjamin Burnham, whom they knew to have been born into the commercial classes. The transactions of investing money with him and accepting the returns represented no challenge to their standing; but to display an interest in where the profits came from and how they had been accumulated would have been well below their place. The old Raja knew nothing more about Mr Burnham than that he was a shipowner, and there he was content to let the matter rest. Each year, from the time of their first meeting onwards, the zemindar gave a sum of money to Mr Burnham to augment the consignments of his agency: every year he got back a much larger sum. He would laughingly refer to these payments as his tribute from the ‘Faghfoor of Maha-chin' – the Emperor of Greater China.

That his money was accepted by the Englishman was the Raja's singular fortune – for in eastern India, opium was the exclusive monopoly of the British, produced and packaged entirely under the supervision of the East India Company; except for a small group of
Parsis, few native-born Indians had access to the trade or its profits. As a result, when it came to be known that the Halders of Raskhali had entered into a partnership with an English trader, a great number of friends, relatives and creditors had begged to be allowed to share in the family's good fortune. By dint of much pleading and cajolery they persuaded the old zemindar to add their money to the sums that he annually deposited with Mr Burnham: for this privilege they were content to pay the Halder estate a ten-per-cent dasturi on the profits; so great were the returns that this commission seemed perfectly reasonable. Little did they know of the perils of the consignment trade and how the risks were borne by those who provided the capital. Year after year, with British and American traders growing ever more skilled in evading Chinese laws, the market for opium expanded, and the Raja and his associates made handsome profits on their investments.

But money, if not mastered, can bring ruin as well as riches, and for the Halders the new stream of wealth was to prove more a curse than a blessing. As a family, their experience lay in the managing of kings and courts, peasants and dependants: although rich in land and property, they had never possessed much by way of coinage; what there was of it, they disdained to handle themselves, preferring to entrust it to a legion of agents, gomustas and poor relatives. When the old zemindar's coffers began to swell, he tried to convert his silver into immovable wealth of the kind he best understood – land, houses, elephants, horses, carriages and, of course, a budgerow more splendid than any other craft then sailing on the river. But with the new properties there came a great number of dependants who had all to be fed and maintained; much of the new land proved to be uncultivable, and the new houses quickly became an additional drain since the Raja would not suffer them to be rented. Learning of the zemindar's new source of wealth, his mistresses – of whom he had exactly as many as there were days in the week, so as to be able to spend each night in a different bed – grew more exigent, vying with each other in asking for gifts, baubles, houses, and jobs for their relatives. Always a doting lover, the old zemindar gave in to most of their demands, with the result that his debts increased until all the silver Mr Burnham earned for him was being channelled directly to
his creditors. Having no more capital of his own to give to Mr Burnham, the Raja came increasingly to depend on the commissions paid by those who entrusted him to be their go-between: this being the case, he had also to expand the circle of investors, signing a great many promissory notes – or hundees as they were known in the bazar.

As was the custom in the family, the heir to the title was excluded from the estate's financial dealings; being studious by inclination and dutiful by nature, Neel had not sought to question his father about the running of the zemindary. It was only in the final days of his life that the old zemindar informed his son that the family's financial survival depended on their dealings with Mr Benjamin Burnham; the more they invested with him the better, for their silver would come back doubled in value. He explained that in order to make the best of this arrangement, he had told Mr Burnham that this year he would like to venture the equivalent of one lakh sicca rupees. Knowing that it would take time to raise such a large amount, Mr Burnham had kindly offered to forward a part of the sum from his own funds: the understanding was that the money would be made good by the Halders if it wasn't covered by the profits from that summer's opium sales. But there was nothing to worry about, the old zemindar had said: in the past two decades there had never been a single year when their money had not come back with a large increase. This was not a debt, he had said, it was a gift.

A few days later the old zemindar had died, and with his passing everything seemed to change. That year, 1837, was the first in which Burnham Bros. failed to generate profits for its clients. In the past, when the opium ships returned from China, at the end of the trading season, Mr Burnham had always come in person to the Raskhali Rajbari – the Halders' principal seat in Calcutta. It was the custom for the Englishman to bring auspicious gifts, like areca-nuts and saffron, as well as bills and bullion. But in the first year of Neel's incumbency there was neither a visit nor any promise of money: instead the new Raja received a letter informing him that the China trade had been severely affected by the sudden decline in the value of American bills of exchange; its losses aside, Burnham Bros. was
now facing severe difficulties in remitting funds from England to India. At the end of the letter there was a polite note requesting the Raskhali estate to make good on its debts.

In the meanwhile, Neel had signed a great many hundees for merchants in the bazar: his father's clerks had prepared the papers and shown him where to make his mark. When Mr Burnham's note arrived, the Halder mansion was already under siege by an army of lesser creditors: some of these were wealthy merchants, who could, without compunction, be staved off for a while; but there were also many relatives and underlings who had entrusted what little they had to the zemindar – these impoverished and trusting dependants could not be refused. It was in trying to return their money that Neel discovered that his estate had no more cash available than was required to cover its expenses for a week or two. The situation was such that he demeaned himself to the point of sending a pleading letter to Mr Burnham, asking not just for time, but also a loan to tide the estate through until the next season.

In return he had received a note that was shocking in the peremptoriness of its tone. In reading it, Neel had wondered whether Mr Burnham would have struck a similar pitch with his father. He doubted it: the old Raja had always got on well with Englishmen, even though he spoke their language imperfectly and had no interest at all in their books. As if to compensate for his own limitations, the Raja had hired a British tutor for his son, to make sure that he had a thorough schooling in English. This tutor, Mr Beasley, had much in common with Neel, and had encouraged his interests in literature and philosophy. But far from putting him at ease in the society of Calcutta's Englishmen, Neel's education had served exactly the opposite end. For Mr Beasley's sensibility was unusual amongst the British colonials of the city, who tended to regard refinements of taste with suspicion, and even derision – and never more so than when they were evinced by native gentlemen. In short, by both temperament and education, Neel was little fitted for the company of such men as Mr Burnham, and they in turn tended to regard him with a dislike that bordered on contempt.

Of all this Neel was well aware, but he still found Mr Burnham's note startling. The Burnham firm was not in a position to extend a
loan, it said, having itself suffered greatly because of the current uncertainty in the trade with China. The note went on to remind Neel that his debts to Burnham Bros. already far exceeded the value of the entire zemindary: these arrears had to be made good at once, it said, and asked him to consider transferring his landholdings to the Burnham firm in exchange for the liquidation of some part of his dues.