The Setting Sun (25 page)

‘Recognise this?’

I nod. Beethoven’s
Pastoral
. Farrokh holds up two bottles, Ballantyne’s and Courvoisier. I point to the whisky. We sip our drinks in silence for a while. But Farrokh’s fidgety and soon gets up to change the music.

‘How was Gujur’s interview?’

‘Fine. What time’s it on? Couldn’t find the channel in my room.’

Farrokh shrugs dismissively. ‘Recognise this?’ he asks again.

This has the feel of an exam.
‘Elvira Madigan.’

‘Please!’ he retorts. ‘Mozart’s piano concerto number 21.’

Unsure of how to soothe him, I ask after his business. Farrokh immediately relaxes and is soon talking volubly about how well it’s going, the new export markets he’s negotiating.

‘Not bad for a company that began in beer barrels, eh?’ he concludes. ‘Guess how much I’m worth?’ Farrokh calculates rapidly on a pad, before waving it triumphantly. ‘At today’s exchange rate, 250 million sterling.’

I can’t think what to say. Fortunately, my embarrassment’s relieved by a volley of barks. Farrokh gets up and goes to the window.

‘Come down and meet them.’

His wife and daughter are soon in the kitchen, stacking booty on a worktop as a servant struggles behind with the larger bags. Mrs Cooper’s a fine-looking woman who greets me cursorily before excusing herself to go and shower. The daughter lingers a moment. She’s in designer jeans and embroidered shirt, a cream silk scarf loose round her neck. I wonder if Farrokh’s grooming his daughter to take over the business. She answers his questions about drinks for the party before disappearing down the same corridor as her mother. I get the feeling the house is zoned, women here, men upstairs. It sits oddly with Farrokh’s aggressive modernity.

I’m keen to get off and see if I can catch Gujur’s interview, but Farrokh seems reluctant to relinquish me.

‘What did you do today?’

When I’ve explained, he leans forward. ‘All this VIP nonsense,’ he scowls. ‘Why don’t they concentrate resources on proper police work?’ Perhaps sensing he’s been abrasive, Farrokh suddenly smiles sharkily. ‘Would you like to meet
our Rajah? No doubt you’ll be wanting to write a travelogue about the mysterious East when you get home?’

I’m beginning to dislike my host, but it’s too good an offer to refuse. Aside from anything else, it might give me more insight into the fragile political alliances of Bill’s time. ‘Thanks, Farrokh. But not tomorrow afternoon, please.’

‘Why not?’

I shrug. ‘I’m going to meet some people.’

‘I’ll call in the morning to confirm.’

‘Not before ten, please,’ I say with a yawn. ‘I need a lie-in. Haven’t been sleeping well.’

‘Tired? But you’re on holiday.’

‘Sort of,’ I concede.

‘I don’t take holidays. Work ten hours a day, even now.’

Why, when he’s already so rich? Surely there are other things in life. As if reading my thoughts, Farrokh grimaces.

‘And I’ll carry on till I drop.’

While he refreshes our drinks, I ask about Modak. ‘Do you know why his father was sacked?’

Farrokh looks at me keenly. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Just wondered, since he was a colleague of my father’s.’

‘No, I don’t.’

Instinct tells me he’s concealing something.

It’s a relief to escape at last. Farrokh seems irritated again when I decline his offer of a lift. Am I letting the side down by walking? But he’s downed a fair quantity of spirits and I find driving in India scary at the best of times. He accompanies me past his ravening hounds to the junction, which is bathed in patchy moonlight. I’m thankful for it, because the street lights are few and far between. I vaguely recognise some constellations. We can’t be far off the latitude of Tanzania here. But I can’t name them. Bill never got to finish teaching me the tropical stars. Despite the deep, rustling shadows of the trees, I feel perfectly safe. Indeed, so far on my trip I haven’t experienced the slightest sense of personal danger. The Mumbai attacks
seem a world away. Hard to imagine the atmosphere of fear there must have been while Bill was here. Reaching the main road, I pass an imposing colonial building, lights ablaze at the end of a long drive. The sentry salutes crisply, before confirming it’s the district commissioner’s, the setting in
No Place for Crime
for a glittering dinner which Kumar and ‘Bill’ attend in honour of the governor of Bombay. I imagine the ‘Woodie’ pulling up in real life and Bill checking his wing collar in the mirror as he’s saluted through.

Ajinkya Tara fort’s a brooding black mass in the moonlight. Built long before the British arrived, it continues to endure imperturbably. Difficult to understand how a handful of foreigners could have hoped to bind to them the civilisation this monument represents, especially once the people turned against them. Force, though no doubt the simpler option, was inevitably insufficient in the end. At best Bill would only have been sticking his finger in the dyke. Did he know that, or did blind obedience or an iron sense of duty drive him on regardless? Perhaps it was the confidence of youth. Or wilful obstinacy.

On the way back to camp, the boy’s father is teaching him natural history. The rock hyrax, he says, with that wondering look which always makes his son’s heart melt, is the closest zoological relative of the elephant. The boy laughs. Yes, the hyrax has a long snout, but how can such a tiny rat-like darting thing be connected to the majestic
tembo?
His father asks why he’s laughing, when it’s scientific fact. Later he explains the difference between the social life of termites and of
siafu,
the fearsome soldier ants. At school, the pupils egg each other on when they arrive in their marching columns, innumerable miniature legionaries. It takes nerve to grab them behind their bulging heads. Soldier ants are agile and quick, and their pincers dig deep and painfully into flesh. Even when the bodies are pulled off, they don’t release their jaws. The trick’s to offer the hem of your shorts to bite on so you end up with a chain of totem heads clamped to the cloth. He with the most trophies wins; and the bleeding when the ants catch you makes being top head-hunter all the sweeter
.

But the boy finds the description of the termite colonies too far-fetched, and says so. How can a whole scaled-down skyscraper, with millions of inhabitants, revolve around a single queen? His father’s smile tightens
.

‘You’ll see for yourself,’ he says quietly
.

When they’ve had afternoon tea, he calls some of the men. They’re mystified when he tells them to fetch picks and strip off their shirts
.

‘Choose one,’ he commands the boy
.

Stretching across the plain, every hundred yards or so, are rock-hard, red steeples, many ten or twelve feet tall, scattered amongst occasional baobabs. The boy loves those colossal trees, their branches, disproportionately flimsy, more like crazy roots; the fruit’s equally bizarre, leathery, distended gourds, like rugby balls swaying in the breeze. Kimwaga has told him that after Creation, the baobabs became too proud of the beautiful foliage they’d been given. In retribution, God pulled them all up and stuck them back upside down. The termite towers are equally intriguing. Every grain of sand’s been ingested by its inhabitants, coated to fuse it to the next one with a mortar durable as concrete
.

The boy feels ashamed at the trouble he’s causing when he sees the game scouts take up position. They’ve had a long day, and have been looking forward to their boiled maize and stew. His father’s taking it too far. But the boy’s fascinated, too. He compromises by pointing to a smaller column, perhaps seven feet high, only ten or twelve round the base. The scouts look at one another disbelievingly. But they set to, singing rhythmically to encourage each other as they take turns with the picks. The iron spikes rise and fall, sometimes skidding off the surface, painfully chipping a way through the obstinate defences. The ground begins to swarm with indignant pale blobs. But they’re no problem. Unlike
siafu,
termite soldiers are blind and sluggish. The boy’s mesmerised by the muscular effort of the scouts, the bass grunts which accompany the singing, the clang of the downward strikes, the obdurate resistance of the earthworks. A little way in, the colour’s darker red because the ants’ cooling system keeps things a little moister. The interior’s honeycombed, endless passages broken up by wider galleries, some filled with supplies – desiccated wings, a patch of fur, even a tiny bone, so white it’s like a ghost’s vertebra
.

It takes more than an hour to demolish most of one side of the pillar. The shadows of the baobabs are creeping rapidly towards them and the first stars emerge, sparks struck off the blinding afternoon sun. As the scouts tire, the boy’s father strips his own shirt off. He’s hairier than his men and more heavily built. Soon the sweat’s running down his back, too. The scouts now rest on their pick handles to watch. The earthwork turns chocolate as his father approaches the centre of the hive. Unlike the men, he neither sings nor grunts. Even when it’s getting too dark to see properly, and the fruitbats have begun to zigzag overhead, he continues, breathing heavily, great shoulders labouring to heave the pick skywards. Finally a couple of scouts resume their work. If they don’t join in, everyone’s labour will be wasted. Bwana
ndogo,
little bwana must find his queen, one mutters, before it gets pitch black
.

As the Milky Way forms in the satin night sky, delicate as dandelion fluff, seemingly close enough to touch, his father sends the men for a hurricane lamp. He says that anyone who wants to eat now can do so. Only Hamisi returns, with the light and filtered water. On safari, it’s carried in crate after crate of old Gordon’s Gin bottles with orange and cream labels. His father drinks off half of one, before hanging the lamp on a stick which he jams in the wrecked battlements of the termite colony. The head game scout stays to offer advice on where to dig next. The mosquitoes, about which the boy’s father’s usually so punctilious, have become persistent. Only when the boy complains softly that his ankles are being bitten, does the digging stop
.

‘Can’t have you catching malaria,’ he mutters. But he seems grateful for the interruption, his great chest pumping, shoulders slumped as he picks up his shirt and flicks it free of the writhing pus-balls
.

‘Damn queen,’ he says. ‘Probably took one wriggle further back every time the pick landed. I imagine she’s skedaddled over the other half of the anthill. We should have started from both sides at once. But I wanted you to see it in cross-section.’

On the way back to the tents, the sky blazes with stars. There are so many, the heavens so deep and at the same time depthless, the boy feels vertigo. And a sudden aching sense of sadness. It’s as if the contents of the tower have been tipped into the vast black bowl, the millions of tiny beings still pulsating with life but now separated forever
.

They revisit the excavations the following morning. The colony’s empty. Not a single ant remains amongst the rubble. The ruined interior has already dried to the same rusty colour as the outside. Wind whistles softly through the abandoned passages and galleries
.

‘Sorry, old chap,’ the boy’s father murmurs. ‘We’ll try another time.’

The boy, awestruck by the absent millions, can think of no adequate response
.

CHAPTER 10

A History Play

When the phone jangles at seven a.m., I awake bewildered. Another disturbed night. I’ve been dreaming about Bill, but disorientation drives the details from my mind.

‘Farrokh here. Rajah Udein’s away, but his uncle’s happy to show you round the old palace. Eleven-thirty?’

As usual, there’s no negotiation. I’m put out. Farrokh could have left a message at reception. I told him I wanted to lie in, in order to gather my strength for the afternoon. But there’s no question of going back to sleep. Today may prove the most significant of my whole trip. I wonder anxiously what Chafal will be like, whether we’ll be able to find eyewitnesses. How will Sub-Inspector Phule respond when I tell him my true reasons for wanting to go there?

Breakfast over, I head to the police station in an auto-rickshaw. Lorries and vans are parked outside, disgorging constables, and Kulkarni’s in full dress uniform, smile dulled, as if he’s eaten too many sweets since yesterday.

‘Preparations for the
bandobast
going well?’

‘Very good. Just a few adjustments before the first parade,’ Kulkarni says, beaming again as he takes me to the window Bill must have stared out of so often. A lone bugler’s practising on the saluting podium, now covered with bunting.

‘The DSP’s up at the sports field,’ Kulkarni explains. ‘The intra-districts start today.’

‘Aren’t you taking part?’

He chuckles. ‘Once upon a time.’ He swerves his hips comically. ‘By the way, congratulations on your TV appearance. My wife and I enjoyed it.’

‘I never got to see it. Do you think it’ll flush out any more veterans?’

Kulkarni shrugs. ‘We were lucky to find even one after all this time.’

‘Well, thanks for your efforts. I’d better pop down to Mr Walawalkar. Hope everything goes off well.’

The steno, however, has had no luck. ‘We are finding weekly confidentials from the 1950s, but nothing from British times,’ he apologises.

I mention Shinde’s history of the Parallel Government. ‘He definitely consulted them.’

‘Yes, sir Professor. But did he see them in Satara?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Only other possibility here is district commissioner. I called. But he’s out of station.’

‘Until when?’

Walawalkar waggles his head ambiguously.

‘Do you know where the Inspection bungalow is, where my father stayed?’

Again the deprecating head-waggle.

I’m deflated. This has been my best chance of tracking down Bill’s reports outside of Mumbai. I’ve heard the voices of so many of those concerned during his posting here. Chafal villagers are quoted in the deposition to the Congress activist that Shinde based his accusations on, and I hope to speak with some of them again this afternoon. Former colleagues – Modak, Hobson and the old constable – have had their say. Now there’s even a lead to two of the surviving underground leaders. Everyone has made themselves heard, it seems, except Bill himself – other than in tiny snippets in the SIB files. I’ll simply have to go to Kolhapur. Bhosle and Shinde are my route not only to the nationalist leaders, but to the correct archives in Mumbai. It’s my last hope if I want to hear Bill’s voice. If I set aside two or three days for Kolhapur, there should still be opportunity to get back to Mumbai
and search in the right places before heading back to England.