Isobel’s affections belonged exclusively to Michael, a tall skinny boy who was quiet by nature and given to long inexplicable spells of melancholy. Michael had the dubious privilege of having known, and therefore of remembering, his parents. They had died during a flood of the Ganges Delta when an overloaded barge had capsized. Michael spoke little and was a good listener. There was only one way of deciphering his thoughts: by looking at the dozens of drawings he did during the day. Ben used to say that if there was more than one Michael in the world, he’d invest all his fortune – still to be made – in the paper business.
Michael’s best friend was Seth, a strong Bengali boy with a serious expression who smiled about six times a year and even then with hesitation. Seth was a scholar of anything that came into his line of fire, a tireless devourer of Mr Carter’s classics, and keen on astronomy. When he wasn’t with us, he concentrated all his efforts on building a strange telescope, with which, according to Ben, you couldn’t even see the tips of your toes. Seth never appreciated Ben’s vaguely caustic sense of humour.
Only Ben remains, and, although I’ve left him until the end, I still find it hard to talk about him. There was a different Ben for every day. His mood changed every half-hour and he’d go from long stretches of silence, a sad expression on his face, to periods of hyperactivity that ended up exhausting us all. One day he wanted to be a writer; the following day an inventor and a mathematician; the day after that a sailor or a deep-sea diver; the rest of the time it was all of those things with a few more added. Ben invented mathematical theories that even he didn’t manage to remember and wrote such bizarre tales of adventure that he ended up destroying them a week after they were finished, embarrassed at the thought that he had penned them. He machine-gunned us constantly with elaborate ideas and complex puns which he always refused to repeat. Ben was like a bottomless trunk, full of surprises, also of mystery, light and shadow. He was, and I suppose he still is, even though we haven’t seen one another in decades, my best friend.
As for me, there’s not much to tell. Just call me Ian. I had only one dream, and it was a modest one: to study medicine and become a doctor. Fate was good to me and I was granted that wish. As Ben wrote in one of his stories, I ‘just happened to be passing by and was a witness to those events’.
I remember that in the last days of that month, May 1932, all of us – all seven members of the Chowbar Society – were going to turn sixteen. It was a fateful age, both feared and keenly anticipated by us all.
Following its statutes, St Patrick’s would return us to society when we reached sixteen so that we could grow into responsible men and women. That date held another meaning that we all understood only too well: it signified the dissolution of the Chowbar Society. From that summer onwards our paths would diverge, and despite our promises and all the kind lies we had told ourselves, we knew that it would not be long before the bond that had joined us was washed away like a sandcastle on the seashore.
I have so many memories of those years that even today I catch myself smiling at Ben’s witty remarks and the fantastic stories we shared in the Midnight Palace. But perhaps, of all the images that refuse to be swept away by the current of time, the one I recall most vividly is that of a figure I often thought I saw at night in the dormitory shared by most of the boys of St Patrick’s – a long dark room with a high vaulted ceiling reminiscent of a hospital ward. I suppose that, due to the insomnia I suffered until two years after I moved to Europe, I found myself, yet again, a spectator of everything that was going on around me while the others slept …
It was there, in that soulless dormitory, that night after night I thought I saw a pale light crossing the room. Not knowing how to react, I would try to sit up and follow the reflection until it reached the other end, and in that moment I would look at it again, just as I had dreamed I would look at it on so many other occasions. The evanescent silhouette of a woman swathed in spectral light slowly bent over the bed in which Ben was sleeping. Each time, I struggled to keep my eyes open and thought I could see the lady stroking my friend’s face in a maternal way. I gazed at her translucent oval face surrounded by a halo of diaphanous light. The lady would raise her eyes and look at me. Far from being frightened, I embraced her sad wounded look. The Princess of Light would then smile at me and, after stroking Ben’s face one more time, would dissolve into the night like a silver mist.
I always imagined that the vision I saw was the spirit of the mother Ben had never met and, somewhere in my heart, I maintained the childish hope that, if one day I managed to fall into a deep sleep, a similar apparition would also take care of me. That was the only secret I did not share with anyone, not even Ben.
Calcutta, 25 May 1932
FOR OVER THIRTY-FIVE YEARS, AS HEAD OF ST Patrick’s, Thomas Carter had taught his pupils literature, history and arithmetic with the confidence of a jack of all trades and master of none. The only subject he was never able to deal with properly was the subject of their departure. Year after year, the boys and girls whom the law would soon place outside the influence and protection of his institution would file past him, their faces revealing a mixture of anticipation and fear. And as he watched them walk out of the orphanage, Thomas Carter would think of their lives as the blank pages of a book in which he had written the initial chapters of a story he would never be allowed to finish.
Beneath the austere expression of a man not given to displays of emotion, nobody feared the date on which those blank books would leave his desk for ever more than Thomas Carter. They would pass into unknown hands, perhaps to more unscrupulous pens who would inscribe a sombre twist in the plot, a lifetime away from the dreams and the expectations with which his pupils undertook their solitary flight into the streets of Calcutta.
Experience had taught him to abandon any desire to find out how his students fared once he could no longer offer guidance and shelter. For Thomas Carter, saying goodbye usually went hand in hand with the bitter taste of disappointment – sooner or later he would discover that the young people who had been robbed of a past were also, it seemed, being robbed of a future.
That hot night in May, as he listened to the young people’s voices in the courtyard, where they were having a small farewell party, Thomas Carter stared at the city lights from the darkness of his office. Flocks of black clouds fled across a canopy of stars towards the horizon.
Once again he had refused the invitation to the party and instead had remained in his armchair, sitting quietly with no light other than the multicoloured reflections from the paper lanterns with which Vendela and the pupils had decorated the trees in the courtyard and the facade of St Patrick’s, as if it were a ship ready to be launched. There would be time enough to utter words of farewell in the few days remaining until he had to comply with the law and return the children to the streets from which he had rescued them.
As had become the custom in recent years, it wasn’t long before Vendela knocked on his door. For once, she came in without waiting for a reply and closed the door behind her. Carter noticed the nurse’s cheerful face and smiled in the dark.
‘We’re getting old, Vendela,’ said the headmaster.
‘You’re getting old, Thomas,’ she corrected him. ‘I’m maturing. Aren’t you coming down to the party? The kids would love to see you. I’ve reminded them you aren’t exactly the life and soul of a party … But if they haven’t listened to me for the past few years then they’re not going to start now.’
Carter lit a small lamp on his desk and gestured to Vendela to take a seat.
‘How long have we been together, Vendela?’ he asked.
‘Twenty-seven years and eight months, Mr Carter. More than I endured with my dear late husband, God rest his soul.’
Carter laughed. ‘How have you managed to put up with me all this time? Don’t hold back. Today’s a holiday and I’m in a good mood.’
Vendela shrugged and fiddled with a piece of scarlet streamer that was tangled in her hair.
‘The pay isn’t bad and I like the children. You’re not coming down, are you?’
Carter shook his head slowly.
‘I don’t want to ruin the party,’ he explained. ‘And besides, I couldn’t bear to hear another of Ben’s jokes.’
‘Ben’s very calm tonight,’ said Vendela. ‘He’s sad, I suppose. The boys have already given Ian his ticket.’
Carter’s face lit up. The members of the Chowbar Society – whose clandestine existence had been known to Carter for some time – had for months been saving money to buy a ticket on a ship to Southampton, which they planned to give to their friend Ian as a goodbye present. For years Ian had been expressing his desire to study medicine, and Mr Carter, at Ben and Isobel’s suggestion, had written to a number of English schools, supporting the boy and recommending him for a scholarship. The news of the scholarship had arrived a year ago, but the cost of the journey to London turned out to be far higher than anyone had expected.
Faced with this problem, Roshan suggested robbing the offices of a shipping company that was two blocks away from the orphanage. Siraj proposed they organise a raffle. Carter took out a sum from his meagre personal savings and Vendela did the same, but it was not enough.
So Ben decided to write a three-act play entitled The Spectres of Calcutta – a phantasmal piece of gibberish in which everyone died, including the stagehands. With Isobel playing the lead as Lady Windmare, the rest of the group performing secondary roles and an over-the-top production courtesy of Ben, it enjoyed remarkable success with its audiences – though not with its critics – in various schools in the city. As a result, enough money was collected to pay for Ian’s journey.