Night Train to Jamalpur(97)

The tonga set off fast. It turned right out of Fairlie Place, and into Dalhousie Square. We then began running south along Government Place, where we came alongside trams. It seemed we were beginning to race one of them. As the tram rocked along, a spray of sparks tumbled from the pantograph collecting the power from the overhead, and it was as if the sparks had ignited the lighting that now flashed. I eyed Jogendra, waiting for the great crash of thunder. When it came there was no flicker of reaction on his face. We pressed on, now under roaring rain. Through the window slats, I saw people running in all directions, and umbrellas were sprouting at a great rate like so many black flowers.

A few minutes later we turned left off Kidderpore Road into Lower Circular Road; we then turned into Bhawanipore Road, where there were no other tongas. We were closing on the place that had been marked on the map. Bhawanipore Road had once been grand, but now some of the buildings were roofless, with palm trees sprouting inside, and most of the window shutters smashed, or sagging at odd angles. We turned again, into a nameless road, and here was further deterioration, the houses becoming so many brick or tin hutches under the worsening rain. Canvas canopies were attached to some, and all this material shuddered in the storm like rigged sails. The road ended at a stinking black canal.

Tolly’s Nullah was a waterway that had been de-silted a hundred years before by a certain Colonel Tolly . . . but then it had silted up again, at least in part. It still connected the docks on the Hooghly with a couple of other rivers to the east of the city, but Colonel Tolly would have been disgusted at the state of it in 1923. In that lashing rainstorm, Tolly’s Nullah resembled a black-ink etching of Tolly’s Nullah.

We had come to rest on the black muddy south bank of it. We climbed down, and paid off the tonga-wallah. Two white cows loitered on the black beach, one with a scrap of pink ribbon attached to a horn; there were also a number of broken carts. Immediately to the left of us stood a derelict pumping station that appeared mosque-like. In the corresponding position on the opposite bank stood a lone chimney, a mysterious vapour swirling around the top of it. A sailing ship with broken masts and spars rotted in midstream, and alongside it a smaller boat (it might once have been a lighter to the sailing ship) revolved in the swirling waters at about the speed of the second hand of a watch. We had arrived at the very spot marked on the map, but there was no sign of the snake men’s uncle. Deo Rana was pointing to the right, and there – a hundred yards or so along the bank – was a parked tonga. The tonga-wallah sat up top, huddled in an oilskin cape; and two men were approaching the tonga from the direction of the water. One was a big European fellow in oilskin cape and sola topee. The other was a small Indian in loose white clothes, and with a blanket around his shoulders. These two were Charles Sermon and the gardener, or mali, of the Railway Institute. I ought to have guessed that these two were in partnership somehow. I made rapidly towards them across the black beach with Deo Rana in tow. As we walked I shouted over my shoulder, explaining to Deo Rana the identity of the two men we were approaching, because, as far as I knew, he had never clapped eyes on either before.

Charles Sermon removed his horn-rimmed glasses, fished out a handkerchief from beneath his cape, wiped his glasses and set them back on his nose. Having verified my identity, he raised a hand in greeting, before turning to say a few words to his Indian companion.

When we converged on the black beach – with the rain repeatedly relenting with a sigh, only to then redouble its force – all was gentlemanly. Sermon, wheezing badly, shook my hand. I introduced Deo Rana to Sermon, who indicated the mali, saying ‘You’ll recognise Gopal from the Institute.’ He added in a confidential tone, ‘He’s the stoutest of fellows, Jim,’ although ‘stout’ was exactly what Gopal was not. Shouting over the rain, Sermon continued, ‘I owe you an apology, Jim, for trespassing on your investigation, but when you said you were on the trail of the big snake chief of Calcutta, I spoke to Gopal, and he knew just who you meant. Gopal knows snakes, Jim. Every gardener in the city wages a constant war against them.’

‘But where is he?’ I said. ‘The big snake chief?’

Sermon turned and pointed along the black waterway. Beyond the broken sailing ship, in the direction that might have been called ‘upriver’ if the water in Tolly’s Nullah could be said to flow, there was another boat. Deo Rana was already making towards it. I had figured this craft for a bamboo hut constructed on the very edge of the water, whereas in fact the mass of thatch I had seen through the rain formed the roof of the cabin of a moored boat.