'Are you sure?' said Urmila. 'We've heard this talk about a First Division contract so many times but nothing ever seems to come of it.'
'But this time's different,' her mother cried. She put an arm around Urmila's shoulders and pulled her close. 'Just think, Urmi; a First Division contract – money, maybe a flat. At last you'll be able to give up this stupid job and stay at home. Everything will be paid. Maybe we can even get you married before it's too late. We can put an advertisement in the papers… '
'Ma, that's enough,' Urmila said wearily, knowing exactly what was to follow: that her time was running out; her hair was thinning; she looked older than she should; the neighbours were talking about how late she got home…
Urmila broke in quickly, before the litany could get fully under way. 'Before you start planning my wedding,' she said, 'let's see if we can get the contract signed.'
Her mother did not fail to notice the sceptical note in her voice. 'I thought you would be glad, Urmi,' she said with a catch in her voice. 'I thought it would make you happy to hear our news. But instead all you do is pull a long face. You just don't care about us any more; all you think about is that awful job of yours.'
'Ma, if I didn't have the job,' Urmila said wearily, 'how would we get by? How far would Baba's pension go? How would we feed the children? Can you tell me that?'
Her mother paid her no attention; she was dabbing her eyes now. 'That's all you think about,' she said. 'Money, money, money. You have no place in your heart for our joys and sorrows. You should have seen how happy your brother was when I told him about the phone call from the Club: the first person he thought about was you. He said: "Didi must cook fish tomorrow, something special like ilish-mach so we can ask the Club's representative to stay for dinner."
Urmila threw her a look of disbelief. 'Ma, I can't cook fish tomorrow morning,' she said. 'I have to be at a press conference at nine – the Communications Minister is arriving on an early-morning flight from Delhi. That means I have to leave the house by eight fifteen at the latest otherwise I'll never get to Dalhousie on time. You know what the traffic is like.'
The first notes of a wail escaped her mother's lips. 'Urmi, what are you saying?' she sobbed. 'Are you saying your job is more important than your brother's life? Are you telling me that some umbrella-head minister from Delhi is more important than us?'
She sobbed on while Urmila sat silent on the edge of the bed. Finally she put her plate down and asked, in exasperation: 'Has someone bought the fish?'
'No,' her mother said. 'There wasn't time and none of us had the money. You'll have to get it tomorrow morning from Gariahat.'
'I can't go to Gariahat in the morning,' Urmila cried in protest. But she gave up the moment the words were out of her mouth. It was futile to argue; in the end, she knew, she would have to go herself. Her father wouldn't go because it would interfere with his early-morning breathing exercises; her brothers wouldn't go because they would be asleep; her sister-in-law wouldn't go because no one would dare ask her. And as for her mother, she wouldn't go either, and if she, Urmila, were to ask, she would burst into tears and say: 'How could you say this to me? Don't you know the homoeopath told me never to go out early in the morning because of my asthma?'
Then Urmila would want to point out that her asthma didn't stop her going to see her guru in Dhakuria every other day when he did his special dawn appearance to show himself to his followers in early-morning sunlight. But she knew she wouldn't say it, no matter how much she might want to. Instead of saying it to her mother, she would say it to herself, as she went hurtling towards Dalhousie in a minibus, with elbows digging into her back and her nose stuck in somebody's armpit. She would keep mouthing the words to herself over and over again – but you go to your guru every other morning, Ma – and she would get angrier and angrier until finally she did something terrible, as she did the other day, when her mother had made her run down to the ironing-man's stall to fetch her brother's football shorts before catching the minibus: she'd worked herself into such a fury, standing on the bus, mouthing her unsaid protests, that in the end she picked up her foot and jammed it down on someone's instep. She didn't even know why she'd done that; she just wanted to feel the crunch as the heel of her shoe dug into flesh and bone. And she had enjoyed herself too, exchanging insults with the fat little man whose foot she'd stepped on; they shouted at each other all the way from Lansdowne to Lord Sinha Road, until she finally reduced him to browbeaten silence.
. She felt her mother's hands gripping her shoulder. 'Don't fall asleep yet, Urmi,' she said. 'Tell me first: will you get the fish and cook it?'
'Maybe I won't have to,' she said sleepily. 'Maybe one of the fish-sellers will come around.'
'But will you do it anyway?' her mother insisted.
'All right,' Urmila said, in resignation. 'I will – now let me go to sleep.'
Her mother gave her shoulder a pat. 'I knew you would,' she said. 'My sweet little Urmi. Oh, your brother will be so happy. You should have seen how excited he was when I told him that Romen Haldar was coming to our house… '
It took a moment for the name to filter through and then Urmila sat up, abruptly.
'Who?' she said, in surprise.
'Romen Haldar,' said her mother again. 'He's the one who's coming to visit us, from the Club. You know who he is don't you?'
'Yes,' Urmila said sleepily. 'Yes, I know who he is. It's just a coincidence, that's all.'
Chapter 21
ELIJAH MONROE FARLEY left for India in October 1893, Ava began, two years after his departure from the research laboratories of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Several friends and acquaintances travelled up to New York to send him off, including his mentor, the venerable malaria specialist W. S. Thayer, and the two other members of his erstwhile team, W. G. MacCallum and Eugene L. Opie. By the summer of 1894 the young Reverend Farley was installed in a small charitable clinic in the remote township of Barich, in the eastern foothills of the Himalayas. The clinic was run by the American Ecumenical Mission and its staff were the only trained medical personnel in the district.
Farley was twenty-six, a tall, lanky man, with ginger hair and moss-green eyes. Austere and contemplative by nature, he adapted easily to the rigours of his new calling. If at all he missed his earlier vocation as scientist, he let no one know: his every waking hour was consumed by the clinic.
Farley had been at the clinic five months before he had his first letter. It was from his old friend and colleague, Eugene Opie in Baltimore. The letter consisted for the most part of trivialities concerning the weather and the marital and professional circumstances of common acquaintances. But Opie also referred, though only in passing, to a research project that he and MacCallum had recently embarked upon. Writing in the careless shorthand of a busy research student, Opie did not take the time to spell out the theoretical implications of this work. But it was immediately clear to Farley that Opie and MacCallum were building on the findings of the Frenchman, Alphonse Laveran.
This unexpected piece of news plunged Farley into a state of perplexity. As a student he had paid little attention to Laveran's work, assuming it to be generally discredited. In this he had taken his lead from no less a person than William Osler, the guiding spirit of Johns Hopkins, who had publicly declared his scepticism of 'Laveranity'. Farley had left for India fully confident that Laveran's theory was headed for medicine's vast graveyard of discredited speculations: his astonishment at the news of its disinterment could not have been greater.