Of all the objects in Shoma’s study, none was more peculiar than that radio. It was a big, solid Murphy model, and the front of the console looked disconcertingly like a face with two sagging cheeks: the black tuning knobs resembled eyes and the panel of ivory-coloured keys below them looked like a row of bared teeth.

  Turning the volume down, Monty scratched his head in bewilderment as he stared at the dimly glowing light of the tuning panel. ‘Were you listening to the radio before the power went?’ he asked Shoma.

  ‘No,’ said Shoma. ‘I haven’t listened to the radio in days. Besides, I would never have left it on at that volume.’

  ‘Maybe someone got into the house?’

  We went around the house, checking all the doors and windows, but found no sign of an intruder.

  Monty returned to the study and examined the radio again. ‘There must have been a power surge when the lights came on—that could have boosted the volume.’

  ‘But look at the frequency, Monty,’ said Shoma, pointing at the ivory keys. ‘It’s the AM key that’s down. I never listen to AM stations. I’m sure I didn’t push that key.’

  ‘You must have done it by mistake,’ said Monty. He turned the volume dial until the tuning panel went dark. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The radio is definitely off now, so let’s get some sleep.’

  We went back to our beds. I was just about to drift off when the radio suddenly came to life again. This time it was blasting the voice of an American newscaster: ‘Today the USSR performed another underground nuclear test …’

  Though I reached the study before Shoma and Monty, I could not bring myself to go inside: the radio’s face was glowing brightly in the darkness and the black knobs were staring fixedly at me.

  Brushing past me, Monty switched on a light and turned the volume down again. ‘There must have been another power surge,’ he said exasperatedly. ‘The humidity has probably got into it and made it extra sensitive to voltage fluctuations.’

  ‘We’ve had this radio a long time,’ said Shoma, ‘and I don’t remember it ever turning itself on before.’

  ‘Didn’t a mouse get inside it once?’ said Monty. ‘It must have made a mess of the wiring. I’ll get Dev to take it to the repair shop tomorrow.’

  ‘Look over there, Monty!’ said Shoma, pointing to the frequency keys. ‘It’s switched itself from AM to SW. How did that happen?’

  Monty scratched his head. ‘Must have been a humongous power surge. Maybe there was a lightning strike or something. Anyway, I’ll just unplug the damn thing so we can get some sleep.’

  Yanking the plug out of the wall socket, Monty dusted his hands, as if to celebrate his victory over the radio. ‘There! That should take care of it.’

  But just as I was beginning to feel drowsy again, the radio came on once more, blasting a newscast in a foreign language.

  When I got to the study, Shoma and Monty were already there, staring at the radio’s plug, which was back in its socket. The tuning panel was flickering enigmatically, while a stream of incomprehensible words continued to pour out of the speaker.

  ‘I wonder what language that is,’ said Shoma abstractedly.

  ‘Japanese, I think,’ said Monty. ‘I thought I caught the word Sapporo.’

  ‘Capital of Hokkaido province,’ said Shoma, in a mechanical monotone.

  It fell to me to ask the obvious question. ‘How did the plug get into the socket again? I saw you pulling it out a few minutes ago.’

  ‘I can explain that,’ Monty declared. ‘I think I left the plug too close to the socket after I took it out. The metal pins must have been sucked in by a sudden burst of magnetism. Happens all the time.’

  Jolted out of her reverie, Shoma said, ‘I’ve never heard of anything like that! Where does it happen all the time?’

  ‘Everywhere,’ said Monty airily. ‘I’ve read articles about it.’

  ‘Or maybe it was a mouse?’ I suggested, trying to be helpful.

  ‘I wouldn’t rule out the possibility,’ said Monty.

  ‘How would a mouse push a plug into a socket?’ said Shoma.

  ‘Mice can do all kinds of stuff,’ said Monty. ‘Didn’t you know that mice can hear a wider range of frequencies than humans? They’ve got all kinds of abilities, which is why they’re so useful to science.’

  Our speculations were interrupted by a loud knocking on the stairwell door. It was Dev.

  ‘That old radio keeps turning itself on,’ Monty explained as he let Dev in. ‘It’s probably some kind of electro-magnetic malfunction.’

  ‘Or it could be a mouse,’ I insisted, having grown attached to the theory.

  Dev stared at the radio for a bit, without saying anything. Then he picked it up and tucked it under his arm. ‘I’ll take it up to the roof,’ he said. ‘It won’t give you any more trouble.’

  ‘Be sure to take it to the repair shop tomorrow,’ said Monty. ‘See if they can find out what’s wrong with it.’

  There were no further interruptions that night. The following day the radio was duly taken to the workshop next morning and when I saw Monty at lunch the next weekend, my first question was: ‘Did they find out what was wrong with the radio?’

  ‘Humphh!’ snorted Monty dismissively. ‘They claimed there was nothing wrong with it and we were just imagining things. But what do they know? I’m sure they’ve never heard of ionization anomalies or asymmetric quantum phenomena. Science doesn’t mean anything to them, useless rascals.’

  I went over to Lankasuka that afternoon and told Tarun and Rajkumar everything that had happened at Tavoy the day before. Rajkumar nodded as he listened, occasionally running his fingers through his great mane of white hair. Then he told us a story of his own, about something that he had witnessed with his own eyes in the mountains of eastern Burma when he was a teenager, not much older than Tarun.

  It happened in a logging camp situated on a thickly forested slope above the mighty Salween river, some three days’ journey north of the city of Moulmein. The camp belonged to a British teak-processing company and was managed by an Englishman who could not have been much older than twenty. He had only been in Burma a couple of years and spoke very little Burmese, so he spent most of his time alone in a small hut propped up on tall stilts; in the evenings, at the end of the workday, he would sit up there drinking whisky and playing a clarinet.

  Not far from the camp was a stockade where some twenty elephants were tethered: it was these animals, and their mahouts, who stacked and transported the giant logs of teak that were cut down by the timbermen. For the elephants the sound of the manager’s clarinet was, for some reason, very unsettling, but nobody could tell the Englishman this because he was prone to fits of rage, especially when he was drunk.

  In that encampment, as in all such logging camps, the people with the hardest jobs were the mahouts, who had to make their elephants stack the massive logs of teak and then carry them down to the river. To do this the mahout and his mount had to function as a single unit, each trusting the other to the fullest. The men who did this best were those who were themselves a little elephant-like in spirit and were therefore able to understand their animals’ moods and needs and whims. And unlike ordinary elephants these creatures depended on their mahouts for everything they would have received from other members of their herd in the wild. Besides, these elephants were also wounded souls because they were being made to do something that they would never have done otherwise: participate in the wanton destruction of a forest. So in their hearts they were angry, torn animals, and because they were so close to their mahouts, those men too came to be filled with resentment and sadness.

  The most dangerous part of the work consisted of rolling the timber down the slope: logs sometimes broke loose and went crashing down, crushing and killing everything in their path. It so happened that one day a mahout was killed on the slope by a runaway log.

  In those Burmese logging camps it was the custom that when a man died, the manager would provide a certificate of release which would be buried or cremated with him, thus setting the dead man’s soul free. So, as was the custom, the dead mahout’s co-workers went to the manager to ask for a certificate. But nothing came of it: the young Englishman was drunk and refused to provide that slip of paper, telling them to come back some other day. The men gave up and went away because they saw that it would serve no purpose to explain to him that the weather was too warm for the burial to be delayed, and so the dead mahout was buried without his certificate of release.

  The next morning a storm broke and it rained through the day and into the night. When darkness fell the Englishman began to play his clarinet again, its piercing sound carrying deep into the forest. Then came another sound, the tinkling of an elephant’s bell, which should not have been heard at that time of the night because the animals were supposed to be tethered in the stockade. But the sound kept coming and it soon became clear that an elephant had broken loose and was fast approaching the camp. When it came into view it was seen to be none other than the dead mahout’s elephant, an old, experienced animal who had been inconsolable since its rider’s death. It was advancing at a run, alone, with no one guiding it.

  Up in his room the Englishman heard the sound too, and when he looked out of his window he saw that the elephant was headed towards his hut. Panic-stricken, he picked up his big rifle and began to fire at the animal. He hit it once, twice, three times but still the old elephant kept coming, blood streaming down its forehead, until at last it flung its full weight against the hut’s bamboo stilts. When the Englishman fell to the ground the elephant collapsed on top of him, killing him instantly.

  ‘We were not far behind,’ said Rajkumar. ‘As we followed the elephant’s tracks we saw something very strange: beside the big marks of the animal’s feet there was another set of footprints, a man’s. Because it was raining heavily, the prints were soon washed away, but we all saw them clearly: footprints made by some invisible presence that had brought the elephant out of the stockade and guided it to the camp—and since that elephant had never obeyed anyone but its dead mahout, there could be no doubt of who it was.’

  ‘Wow, Pops!’ said Tipu over Zoom, baring his teeth in his usual feral grin. ‘That was quite a story you sent over today.’

  ‘It certainly made an impression on me, which is why I still remember it almost fifty years later. But I should tell you that Tarun remembers it a little differently.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because he wrote a book about his family, in which Rajkumar is the main character and this story is in it. His version has many more details.’

  ‘You’re still in touch with him?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Coincidentally Tarun is at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, which is where Shoma did her PhD. He teaches something called “cultural studies” and writes about photography. I see him from time to time: he’s twice divorced and was never very attentive as a father, but he’s trying to make amends to his children now. One of them lives in New Jersey, so he often comes this way.’

  ‘Does his book give any explanation for what Rajkumar saw?’

  ‘No. Tarun once told me that his grandfather was never able to make sense of how those footprints had appeared out of nowhere. All he would say when Tarun questioned him was maybe there’s another reality that exists alongside ours, and sometimes, when some calamity or disaster strikes, or is about to, this hidden world reveals itself to remind us that it is still there, and that it can change the course of everything that we take for granted.’

  Tipu nodded sagely. ‘D’you think that’s what happened at your aunt’s house after the snake was killed? This other reality was sending you a message?’

  ‘What do I know, Tipu? Your guess is as good as mine.’

  Nine

  Very late one night my phone began to ring and for some reason, even without glancing at the screen, I was filled with dread.

  It was Romy: Shoma had had a heart attack that afternoon, he said. Fortunately it was a mild one, and Sumita had known exactly what to do. She had managed to keep Shoma alive until Romy arrived in a taxi, twenty minutes later, rigged out in full protective gear. He had found Shoma breathing but unconscious and had immediately given her an injection. This had turned her around and she was now breathing more or less normally and had a steady pulse. He was confident that she would recover fully in a week or two. For the time being she just needed to be on bed rest.

  ‘Shouldn’t she be hospitalized?’ I asked.

  ‘In ordinary circumstances, maybe,’ said Romy. ‘But given that we’re in a pandemic, she’s much better off at home. These days in Kolkata, hospitalization is like a death sentence. Covid is rampant everywhere and the last thing we want is for her to catch it: with her emphysema, it would be fatal. Besides, there’s nothing she would get in a hospital that she can’t get at home.’

  Feeling frantic, yet helpless, I said, ‘I think it’s time for me to come back to Kolkata.’

  ‘There’s no way you can come,’ said Romy bluntly. ‘There are very few flights arriving in the country, and even if you could get one you would have to spend two weeks in quarantine. And then there’s the risk of getting Covid yourself, in a plane or at an airport. Besides, even if you were here, it wouldn’t be safe for you to go into Shoma’s bedroom: she has to be completely isolated. No, it’s best that you stay where you are for the time being. Sumita and I will keep you posted.’

  ‘Can I talk to her at least?’

  ‘You’ll have to wait a while,’ said Romy. ‘I’ll let you know when she’s ready.’

  A month went by during which I got daily updates from Sumita: for the most part they were about Shoma’s respiration rate and her oxygen and glucose levels, all of which seem to indicate that her condition was improving. But one day Sumita let slip something that took me aback: she said that Shoma had been talking a lot of late, but when I asked what she had been talking about I was told that most of it was just ‘nonsense talk’.

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked Sumita. ‘What has she been saying?’

  Sumita explained to me then that ever since the day of her heart attack Shoma had been complaining about being forced to come back to her sick bed: apparently it was her belief that after losing consciousness she had gone away to another place from where she had been able to observe everything that happened to the body that she had left behind: she had seen how Sumita had given her CPR, how Romy had arrived in a taxi because his car wasn’t working that day, and she had even noticed that he had been wearing a yellow protective suit instead of his usual white one.

  Here I interrupted to ask whether it was true that Romy had worn a yellow suit, and Sumita confirmed that it was.

  ‘But wasn’t she unconscious all through?’ I asked. ‘How could she have known?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sumita.

  ‘Anyway, go on. What else does she talk about?’

  Another subject that Shoma kept returning to, said Sumita, was the injection that Romy had given her. She was adamant that that was what had brought her back, tearing her away from those she wanted to join: her husband, her sister, and many others. If not for that she would have remained in that other place rather than being back in her bed, struggling for every breath, wanting nothing more than to be gone from this earthly life.

  ‘She weeps all the time,’ said Sumita, ‘and blames us for bringing her back. The only thing that consoles her is when she has visitors.’

  ‘Is she allowed to have visitors?’ I asked. ‘I thought she was meant to be in strict isolation.’

  ‘Yes, she is completely isolated,’ said Sumita. ‘No one ever comes into her room except me and the doctor. But Auntie insists that she has visitors from another place and sometimes I overhear her talking to them: I can tell that she thinks her husband is with her, or her sister. Sometimes there are others whose names I don’t know.’

  ‘Does she ever ask about me?’

  ‘She says she hears about you almost every day from one of her visitors who was a friend of yours. Just this morning she said that the weather must be nice where you are because there are red and yellow flowers in the garden behind your house.’

  ‘Really? How strange. She must be hallucinating.’

  ‘That is how she is nowadays.’

  I called Romy as soon as I got off the phone with Sumita to tell him that Shoma seemed to be hallucinating, and to ask whether this might indicate the onset of a neurodegenerative disease. Romy brushed off my fears; it was nothing serious, he said, just some harmless rambling. He had given Shoma several cognitive tests and she had done fine on all of them. In fact, said Romy, in some ways her mind was every bit as sharp as it had ever been.

  ‘But she must be hallucinating,’ I insisted. ‘She told Sumita that there were red and yellow flowers in my downstairs neighbour’s yard.’

  ‘Maybe she’s just talking about something she saw in a dream?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  The idea that there might be flowers in Amanda’s yard was absurd: I knew that she had a couple of small trees and a herb garden but not much else. Indeed, I was so sure that I didn’t even bother to look out of my window until a couple of hours later. And when I did, I discovered, to my utter astonishment, a line of variegated tulips blooming under Amanda’s trees.

  That evening I happened to run into Amanda as I was putting out the trash.

  ‘I see you’ve planted tulips,’ I said through my mask. ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘Oh, a friend of mine gave me some bulbs,’ she said. ‘I planted them last fall. They look good, don’t they?’

  Ten

  Back in 1969, even more so than today, Indians of wealth and consequence thought nothing of keeping people waiting; indeed, they assumed this to be their natural right. Being well aware of this, Shoma did not expect Dipika to be on time for her 11.30 appointment, and nor was she. But even after she arrived, half an hour late, Dipika showed no signs of wanting to get down to the matter at hand. Instead, she kept up an unending stream of small talk as she wandered around Shoma’s study with a cup of tea in her hand, examining the objects and artefacts that were displayed on the room’s shelves.