Ben nodded and hurried off towards the ambulance.
‘Just one minute,’ warned the doctor. ‘Not a second longer.’
Ben went over to the stretcher on which Thomas Carter was lying and tried to smile reassuringly, but when he saw the state the headmaster was in he felt his stomach shrink and the words just wouldn’t come to his lips. One of the doctors standing behind him gave him a nudge. Ben took a deep breath and nodded.
‘Hello, Mr Carter. It’s Ben.’ He wondered whether Mr Carter could hear him.
The wounded man tilted his head slightly and raised a trembling hand. Ben took it and pressed it gently.
‘Tell that man to leave us alone,’ Carter groaned, his eyes still shut.
The doctor gave Ben a look and waited a few seconds before leaving.
‘The doctors say you’re going to get better …’ said Ben. Carter shook his head.
‘Not now, Ben.’ Each word seemed to require a titanic effort. ‘You must listen to me carefully and not interrupt. Understood?’
Ben nodded. ‘I’m listening, sir.’
Carter squeezed his hand.
‘There’s a man who is looking for you and wants to kill you, Ben. A murderer,’ Carter said, struggling to articulate his words. ‘You must believe me. This man calls himself Jawahal and he seems to think you have some connection to his past. I don’t know why he’s looking for you but I do know he’s dangerous. What he’s done to me is only a shadow of what he’s capable of. You must speak to Aryami Bose, the woman who came to the orphanage yesterday. Tell her what I’ve told you, explain what has happened. She tried to warn me, but I didn’t take her seriously. Don’t make the same mistake. Find her and talk to her. Tell her Jawahal was here. She’ll tell you what to do.’
The burnt lips of Thomas Carter closed once more and Ben felt as if the whole world was collapsing around him. What the head of St Patrick’s had confided in him seemed utterly unreal. The shock of the explosion had obviously affected Carter’s reasoning, making him imagine some kind of conspiracy and a whole host of other improbable dangers. At that moment Ben couldn’t contemplate any other explanation, especially in view of what he had dreamed the night before. Imprisoned in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the ambulance, with its cold stench of ether, he wondered for a split second whether the inhabitants of St Patrick’s were all beginning to lose their minds, himself included.
‘Did you hear me, Ben?’ Carter insisted, his voice failing. ‘Have you understood what I said?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ben mumbled. ‘You mustn’t worry.’
Finally Carter opened his eyes and Ben realised with horror what the flames had done to them.
‘Ben, do as I said. Now.’ He was trying to shout but his voice was consumed by pain. ‘Go and see that woman. Swear to me you will.’
Ben heard footsteps behind him. The red-haired doctor grabbed his arm and began dragging him out of the ambulance. Carter’s hand slipped from Ben’s and was left suspended in mid-air.
‘That’s enough,’ yelled the doctor. ‘This man has suffered enough already.’
‘Swear you will!’ groaned Carter, reaching out to him.
The boy watched in dismay as the doctors injected another dose of sedative into the headmaster.
‘I swear, sir,’ said Ben, not knowing if Carter could still hear him. ‘I swear.’
Bankim was waiting for Ben outside. A short distance away stood the members of the Chowbar Society and everyone else who had been present when the disaster occurred. They were all watching Ben and appeared anxious and distressed. Ben approached Bankim and looked straight into his eyes, which were bloodshot from the smoke and tears.
‘Bankim, I need to know something,’ said Ben. ‘Did anyone called Jawahal visit Mr Carter?’
Bankim looked blank.
‘Nobody came today,’ replied the teacher. ‘Mr Carter spent the morning at a meeting with the Town Council and came back around twelve o’clock. Then he said he wanted to go and work in his office and didn’t want to be disturbed, not even for lunch.’
‘Are you sure he was alone when the blast occurred?’ asked Ben, praying that he’d get a positive reply.
‘Yes … I think so,’ answered Bankim, although there was a shadow of doubt in his eyes. ‘Why do you ask? What did he say?’
‘Are you completely sure, Bankim?’ Ben insisted. ‘Think carefully. It’s important.’
The teacher looked down, rubbing his forehead, as if he were trying to find the words to describe what he was barely sure of remembering.
‘About a second after the explosion I thought I saw something, or someone, come out of the office. It was all very confusing.’
‘Something or someone?’ asked Ben.
Bankim looked up and shrugged his shoulders.
‘I don’t know what it was,’ he replied. ‘Nothing I can think of can move that fast.’
‘An animal?’
‘I don’t know. It was probably just my own imagination.’
Aware of Bankim’s disdain for superstition and alleged supernatural phenomena, Ben knew the teacher would never admit to having seen something that was beyond his powers of analysis or understanding. If his mind couldn’t explain it, his eyes couldn’t see it. As simple as that.
‘If that’s the case,’ Ben insisted one last time, ‘what else did you imagine?’
Bankim looked up at the blackened gap that a few hours earlier had been Thomas Carter’s office.
‘I thought this thing was laughing,’ Bankim admitted in a whisper. ‘But I’m not going to repeat that to anyone.’
Ben nodded and, leaving Bankim by the ambulance, he walked over to his friends, who were desperate to hear about his conversation with Carter. Only Sheere observed him with visible concern, as if, deep in her heart, she alone was capable of understanding that Ben’s news would steer events down a dark and fatal path from which none of them would be able to escape.
‘We need to talk,’ said Ben calmly. ‘But not here.’
I recall that may morning as the first sign of a storm that was relentlessly closing in on us, shaping our destiny, building up behind our backs and swelling in the shadow of our complete innocence – that blessed ignorance which made us believe we were worthy of a special state of grace: because we had no past we felt we had nothing to fear from the future.
Little did we know that the jackals of misfortune were not pursuing poor Thomas Carter. Their fangs thirsted for younger blood, blood infused with the stain of a curse that could not be hidden, not even among the noisy street markets or in the depths of Calcutta’s deserted palaces.
We followed Ben to the Midnight Palace, searching for a secret place where we could listen to what he had to say. That day none of us feared that behind the strange accident and the uncertain words uttered by the scorched lips of our headmaster there might be any threat greater than that of separation and the emptiness towards which the blank pages of our future seemed to be leading us. We had yet to learn that the Devil created youth so that we could make our mistakes, and that God established maturity and old age so that we could pay for them …
I also remember that as we listened to Ben’s report of his conversation with Thomas Carter, each one of us, without exception, knew he was keeping something from us, something the wounded headmaster had confided in him. And I remember the worried expression on the faces of my friends, mirrored on my own, as we realised that, for the first time in all those years, our friend Ben had chosen to keep us in the dark.
A few minutes later he asked to speak privately with Sheere, and I thought that my best friend had just delivered the final blow to the doomed Chowbar Society. But future events would prove that, once again, I had misjudged Ben and the loyalty which our club inspired in his soul.
At the time, however, watching my friend’s face as he spoke to Sheere, I realised that the wheel of fortune had begun to turn backwards. Our opponent in the game was prepared to bet high and we didn’t have the knowledge, or experience, to match him.
In the hazy light of that humid scorching day the reliefs and gargoyles on the facade of the Chowbar Society’s secret hideout resembled wax figures melting into the walls. The sun lay hidden behind a dense bank of clouds and a suffocating mist rose from the Hooghly River, sweeping through the streets of the Black Town like the fumes from a poisoned marsh.