‘The city I love is a dark, deep
house of misery, a home to evil spirits
in which no one will open a door, nor a heart.
The city I love lives in the twilight,
shadow of wickedness and forgotten glories,
of fortunes sold and souls in torment.
The city I love loves no one, it never rests; it is a
tower erected to the uncertain hell of our destiny,
of the enchantment of a curse that was written in blood,
the dance of deceit and infamy,
bazar of my sadness …’
The friends remained silent after Siraj had finished reading the poem, and for a moment there was only the whisper of the fire and the distant voice of the city whistling in the wind.
‘I know those lines,’ Sheere murmured. ‘They come from one of my father’s books. They’re at the end of my favourite story, the tale of Shiva’s tears.’
‘Exactly,’ Siraj agreed. ‘We’ve spent the whole afternoon in the Bengali Institute of Industry. It’s an incredible building, almost completely run-down, with floor after floor of archives and rooms buried in dust and rubbish. There were rats, and I bet that if we went there at night we’d find something lurking-’
‘Let’s stick to the point, Siraj,’ Ben cut in. ‘Please.’
‘All right,’ said Siraj, setting aside his enthusiasm for the mysterious building. ‘The point is that, after hours of research – which I’m not going to go into, don’t worry – we came across a file with documents that belonged to your father. It has been in the safekeeping of the Institute since 1916, the year of the accident at Jheeter’s Gate. Among the papers is a book signed by him, and although we weren’t allowed to take it away, we were able to examine it. And we were lucky.’
‘I don’t imagine how,’ Ben objected.
‘You should be the first to see it. Next to the poem someone, I suppose Sheere’s father, did an ink drawing of a house,’ Siraj explained, smiling mysteriously as he handed Ben the sheet of paper.
Ben examined the lines of the poem and shrugged his shoulders.
‘All I can see is words.’
‘You’re losing your mental powers, Ben. It’s a pity Isobel isn’t here to see it,’ Siraj joked. ‘Read it again. Pay attention.’
Ben followed Siraj’s instructions and frowned.
‘I give up. The lines have no order or structure. It’s just prose, cut up any which way.’
‘Exactly,’ Siraj agreed. ‘But what is the rule guiding this division? In other words, why does he cut the line at the point he does when he could choose any other option?’
‘To separate the words?’ Sheere ventured.
‘Or to join them…’ murmured Ben.
‘Take the first word of each line and make a sentence with them,’ said Roshan.
Ben looked at the poem again and then at his friends.
‘Read only the first word,’ said Siraj.
‘The house in the shadow of the tower of the bazaar,’ read Ben.
‘There are at least six bazaars in North Calcutta alone,’ Ian pointed out.
‘How many of them have a tower tall enough to project a shadow over the neighbouring houses?’ asked Siraj.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I do,’ said Siraj. ‘Two: the Shyambazar and the Machuabazar, to the north of the Black Town.’
‘Even so, the shadow a tower can cast during the day would spread across a minimum range of a hundred and eighty degrees, changing every minute,’ said Ben. ‘That house could be anywhere in North Calcutta, which is like saying anywhere in India.’
‘Just a moment,’ Sheere interrupted them. ‘The poem speaks of the twilight. It says, “the city I love lives in the twilight”.’
‘Have you checked that?’ asked Ben.
‘Of course we have,’ replied Roshan. ‘Siraj went to the Shyambazar and I went to the Machuabazar just a few minutes before sunset.’
‘And?’ they all pressed him.
‘The shadow of the tower at the Machuabazar falls on an abandoned warehouse,’ Siraj explained.
‘Roshan?’ asked Ian.
Roshan smiled. He plucked a half-burnt stick from the fire and drew the shape of a tower on the ashes.
‘Like the hand of a clock, the shadow of Shyambazar’s tower points to some gates flanked by tall iron railings. Behind them there’s a courtyard full of palm trees and weeds. And above the palm trees I could just make out a house with a watchtower.’
‘That’s fantastic!’ cried Sheere.
But Ben couldn’t help noticing the anxious look on Roshan’s face.
‘What’s the problem, Roshan?’ he asked.
Roshan slowly shook his head.
‘I don’t know. There was something about the house I didn’t like.’
‘Did you see anything?’ asked Seth.