The staircase was a rusted shell; the last time she saw it the workers had just begun the job of stripping it down to the steel scaffolding, as a preliminary to restoring it to its original glory, when it had swept upwards in a grand curve of mahogany and wrought iron. 'The structure is still sound,' Romen had told her. She had followed him gingerly, stepping from foothold to foothold, and had counted herself lucky when she made it to the top without a fall. Looking at it now, curling up into the smoke, like a gigantic vine, she shied away, wiping her watering eyes. Then, making up her mind, she took a grip on the banisters and pulled herself up a couple of steps.
She stood on a steel rail and shone the torch ahead until it fell upon a length of rusty metal, lying exposed under a plank of rotten wood, a couple of steps further up. That was what Romen had said to do, she remembered now: don't step on the wood – keep to the steel frame. She leaned forward and jumped. Her foot slipped but she managed to catch hold of the banisters. Trying not to look down, she shut her eyes and breathed deeply, struggling to steady herself. She climbed crablike to the next foothold, biting the torch between her teeth, using her hands as well as her feet. She went up the next few steps the same way, rounding the curve of the staircase. After a few more steps she stopped to catch her breath and pointed the torch ahead. The landing at the top of the staircase was no more than a few yards away now. The drumming seemed very close; she could feel it reverberating in the metal, under her hands and feet. When her hand reached the landing she took the torch out of her mouth and placed it on a ledge. She heaved herself up and collapsed on the floorboards.
The drumming was all around her now, so loud and close that she could not tell which direction it was coming from. As she was turning to look, her sari brushed against the torch and knocked it over. It rolled a couple of inches, eluding her hand, and fell off the edge of the landing. She watched as it went spinning down the stairwell, its beam circling around the hall until it hit the floor and went out.
Stifling a sob, she sat up. She began to pat the floorboards around her, trying to orient herself, swivelling all the way around, banging her hands on the splintering wood. Then it dawned on her that she no longer knew which way she was facing – towards the staircase or away from it: her disorientation was complete.
She could feel her chest constricting. She knew she would panic if she stayed on the floor any longer, flailing about, blinded by sweat and smoke, deafened by the noise. She climbed to her feet and saw a dull orange glow somewhere ahead of her, within the whirling clouds of smoke. She took a step towards it and then lowered herself to her hands and knees. She couldn't trust herself to walk on the rotten floor and began to crawl instead, inching slowly towards the glow, shutting her eyes against the stinging smoke.
When she had advanced a couple of yards, she saw that the light was shining out of an arched doorway. Now suddenly she knew where she was: she was facing the entrance to the largest room in the house, a huge woodpanelled mirrored chamber that had once served as a reception room. Ramen had insisted on bringing her up to see it – it was the pride of the house, he said, and he was going to restore it to its former state.
She pushed herself closer to the archway and figures began to take shape in the smoky glow ahead of her. They were sitting crosslegged on the floor, with their backs to her, facing in the other direction. She saw a couple of heads first, and then more, and more, until the whole room seemed to be filled with people. They were chanting something and some were keeping time with drums while others were beating little hand-held cymbals.
She could not bring herself to go forward and there was no going back; she would never be able to find her way down without the torch. Then she remembered something that Romen had showed her on their visit: the reception room had a small raised gallery at the back, a minstrel gallery Romen had called it. He had led her up to it, to show her how immense the room looked from up there. She tried to calm herself now, to think back to that day, several months ago. They had reached the gallery by climbing up a narrow, steep staircase, almost like a ladder. Sonali made an effort to calm herself so she could recall where those stairs were.
She crept forward another yard or so and spotted the entrance to a little anteroom to her right. Edging towards it, she drew level with the entrance and glanced in. At the far corner, she spotted the opening that led to the gallery, glowing orange against the velvety darkness of the room. There were no people in the anteroom, so far as she could tell.
She slipped around the corner and rose to her feet. Then she edged along the wall, with one arm stretched out until her hand hit upon the cold metal of the stepladder. She stepped back and looked at the opening to the gallery: it was directly above her now. All she could see was the flickering orange glow of a fire, reflected through clouds of smoke.
She took a grip on the ladder and climbed quickly up. At the top, the smoke suddenly welled up in her face, forcing itself into her lungs. She stuffed the end of her sari into (her mouth, in an effort to choke back a cough, and looked in.
The narrow, flimsy looking gallery was empty. Pulling her feet up, she sank down and flattened herself on the floor of the gallery. She noticed now that the smoke was even thicker here than it was below; trapped by the ceiling, it swirled around the gallery in dense clouds. Lowering her face, she held her sari pressed against her watering eyes. They were smarting so much now that she knew she would not be able to keep them open for more than a few seconds at a time.
When the stinging had dulled a little, she thrust her head to the edge and looked down. She caught a glimpse of the tops of dozens of heads, some male, some female, young and old, packed in close together. Their faces were obscured by the smoke and flickering firelight but she spotted a couple of weatherbeaten Nepali faces that she was sure she had seen before, when Ramen last brought her to the house. For the rest it seemed like a strangely motley assortment of people: men in patched lungis, a handful of brightly painted women in cheap nylon saris, a few young students, several prim-looking middle-class women – people you would never expect to see together.
Narrowing her eyes against the smoke, Sonali followed their gaze to the fire, burning at the far end of the room: a heap of coal-dust was glowing red in a brazier, improvised from a battered cement pan. Then she had a shock: somewhere among the faces around the fire she spotted a face she knew. She looked again: it was a skeletally thin boy in a T-shirt. Sonali reeled: it was the boy who had been living in her servant's room for the last few months, there could be no doubt about it. He was smiling, saying something to the person next to him.
There was a small clearing in front and every now and again the boy and the others around him would reach in and touch something. Sonali could not see what it was: her view was blocked by several closely packed heads. The crowd was bunched thickly around whatever it was that was lying there; everybody in the room seemed to be staring at that space.
Sonali shut her smarting eyes and let her head drop to the floor. Her sari was drenched and she could barely move her limbs. The floor seemed to turn under her: she knew she was very close to losing consciousness.
Then there was a stir in the crowd and Sonali forced herself to look down again. A figure had come out of the shadows: it was a woman and she was dressed very plainly – in a crisply starched sari, with a white scarf tied around her hair. Her figure was short and matronly and Sonali took her to be in late middle age. She looked very familiar; Sonali was certain she was someone she had once known but hadn't seen in years.