MEven stoned and standing on his “calf’s feet” at the bottom of an opium den, Sam Wyndham remains this policeman who is found with fierce joy. A white man – Scottish like the author – in colonial India in 1921, where future independence was brewing, and which we have been following ever since Attack on Calcutta-Darjeeling, price Point European thriller in 2020. Wyndham narrowly escapes a police raid – irony! – in this third section (the second, The Princes of Sambalpur, reappeared at Folio) to find himself facing a corpse stabbed by a kukri, the curved blade of the Gurkhas, the Nepalese warriors. The first death on the list. The antipodes of cancel culture, Mukherjee returns to the sources of history with biting causticity, letting racism, communalism and all the stupidity of which this era, like ours, was capable of protruding.
Courtesy of Gandhi by Abir Mukherjee. Translated from English by Fanchita Gonzalez Battle. (Liana Levi, 320 pages, 20 euros). Release January 13.
The extract that kills:
December 21, 1921
There’s nothing unusual about a corpse in a funeral home. On the other hand, it is rare to see one enter it on his own. This riddle deserves to be savored, but time is running out, as I am running to save my skin.
A gunshot rings out and a bullet passes near me, hitting nothing more threatening than laundry drying on a roof. My pursuers – colleagues from the Imperial Police Force – are shooting blind in the night. That’s not to say they couldn’t have better luck with their next flurry, and while I’m not afraid of death, being shot in the back while trying to get away isn’t not exactly the epitaph I want on my grave.
So I run, misted with opium, on the roofs of sleeping Chinatown, I slide on the disjointed tiles that will crash into the ground and I climb from one roof to another before finally taking refuge in a space tiny under the ledge of a low wall between two buildings.
The police come closer and I try to calm my breath as they call out to each other in the darkness that swallows their voices. They have apparently separated and may be some distance from each other. So much the better. So they move forward without more benchmarks than I do, and for the moment the best I have to do is stay still and silent.
My capture would lead to some rather embarrassing questions that I would rather not have to answer about what I was doing in Tangra in the middle of the night, smelling of opium and covered in someone else’s blood. There is also the secondary question of the sickle-shaped blade that I hold in my hand. Its presence would also be difficult to explain.
My sweat and blood have evaporated and I shiver. December is cold, at least by Calcutta standards.
Snatches of conversation reach me. Looks like the heart isn’t there. I can’t blame the police for that. They are as likely to tumble off a roof as they are to stumble against me; and given the events of the past few months, I doubt their morale is high. Why risk breaking your neck chasing shadows if no one has to thank them? I want them to turn around, but they persist in striking in the dark with the butt of their rifle or their lathi like blind men crossing a street.
The rhythmic presence comes closer. I envision the choices coming up, at least I would if there were one. Running away is out of the question – the guy is armed and looks so close now that even in the dark he would have little trouble shooting me. Fighting against him is doomed to failure. I have the blade, but I can hardly use it against a colleague, and anyway, with three other cops nearby, my chances of avoiding them shrivel faster than a poppy at dusk.
The sound of the blows changes and the thin concrete above my head rings hollow. The man must be directly above me. He also notices the change in sound and stops. He hits the ledge with his gun and jumps to the ground. I close my eyes waiting for the inevitable, but a voice rises. A voice that I recognize.
“It’s okay guys. That’s enough. We’re going home. “
The boots turn in the direction of the command, and stop for endless seconds. They finally move away and I breathe, then I run my hand over my face. It is still sticky with blood.
The voices fade away and the roofs fall silent. The minutes pass and cries rise from the street – in English, in Bengali, in Chinese – in the sound of trucks starting up. I stay where I am, shivering in my tiny hiding place, trying to figure out what happened.