She gave him a bleak smile and a nod. 'I must go now,' she said. 'Or my tea will get cold. And the way things are going, I suspect it wouldn't be wise to waste a tea bag.' She ducked back inside.
The conversation resounded in Antar's mind through the day as he sat staring at Ava's screen: the precariousness of her circumstances weighed on him in ways he couldn't quite understand. The next morning he was in and out of the kitchen every few minutes until he spotted her, pottering around her apartment.
Leaning over the sink, he shouted: 'Listen: I have an idea.'
She gave him a wan smile. 'Yes?' He could tell she'd been up late, worrying.
'I have an old laptop in my cupboard,' he said. 'I could hook it up with Ava and run a cable through to you. You could have as much time on the Net as you wanted. I've upgraded it a couple of times and it can run the software. The Council gives me twenty hours a week free, and I hardly ever use even a fraction of that. I've got at least a thousand hours coming to me. You can have them.'
Her thin, fine-boned face lit up. 'Really?' she said. 'Could you really do that?'
She hesitated, as though she couldn't believe her luck: 'Are you sure it would be all right? I don't want to get you in any trouble.'
Antar made an attempt at nonchalance. 'It's very irregular, of course,' he said. 'The Council's paranoid about security. But I think I can rig it. If you're careful and you don't try to fool around we'll both be all right.'
'I'll be very careful,' she said earnestly. 'You have my word: I won't do anything that might get you in trouble.' Antar set up the link later that day.
It gave him a twinge to leave his old laptop behind with her: it was an early nineties Korean-made model, sleek and black, with beautifully rounded edges. He'd always loved it: the heft and weight of it in his hands, the muted click of its keyboard, its old-fashioned chrome detailing.
He offered to give her a few lessons but she declined. 'You've been to plenty of trouble already,' she said. 'I won't put you to any more. Lucky will show me: he knows a little about these things.'
'Lucky?' That was the name of the young man from the Penn Station news-stand. Antar tried to imagine him, with his fixed smile and his oddly spaced teeth, sitting in front of his laptop, trying to steer Tara around the Net. He had his doubts but he decided to keep them to himself.
As it turned out, Lucky was evidently a good teacher, for Tara soon found her way around the Net. Antar monitored her closely for the first few days. Then he grew tired of following her around childcare bulletin boards and left her alone.
She got her new job within a few days and had been inordinately grateful ever since. That was why she had wanted to come over tonight. 'I can't afford to take you out,' she said. 'So the least I can do is make sure that you eat properly every once in a while.'
Chapter 29
ON LOWER CIRCULAR ROAD, halfway to the P. G. Hospital, Urmila found herself reading and rereading the bright yellow lettering on the side of a crowded minibus that was jammed up close against her window. The taxi was idling in the traffic, imprisoned by the customary morning throng of cars and buses. Hesitantly Urmila raised her eyes to the windows of the minibus: a dozen people seemed to be staring at her. She turned quickly away.
This was probably the bus she would have been on right now, if she'd been on her way to work. They were probably on it, all the usual crowd: the old man in the dhoti who worked in the Accountant-General's office and was writing a book on something or the other; the railway clerk who carried a huge tiffin-carrier full of food to the Strand every morning; the woman from All India Radio, who had tried to get her to join the 'BBD Bagh Minibus Passengers' Club' last week.
Urmila shrank into the seat. The crumpled sheets of paper were scraping uncomfortably against the tender spot between her breasts. She wanted to reach in and pull it out, but she couldn't, not with that minibus so close to her window.
What if they could see her now, the 'BBD Bagh Minibus Passengers' Club'? What if they were to learn that she was on her way to P. G. Hospital with a complete stranger? What would they think? What would they make of it?
Suddenly she was furious. 'What does the P. G. Hospital have to do with my pieces of paper?' she said, turning upon Murugan. 'Why are you taking me there? What are your intentions?'
'You wanted an explanation, Calcutta,' Murugan said. 'That was the deal. And I'm going to give you an explanation, but I'm going to begin exactly where I want to.'
'And you want to begin at the P. G. Hospital?' she said.
'That's right,' he said. 'That's why I'm taking you there.' She noticed the taxi driver watching them in his mirror. She leaned over and waved her packet of fish under his nose. 'What're you looking at, you cabbage-head?' she snapped. 'Keep your eyes on the road.'
Chastened, the driver dropped his eyes.
'Wow!' said Murugan. 'What was that all about?'
'And you,' she cried, turning on him in fury. 'Who are you, exactly?' Suspicion was raging in her mind now; she began to recall all the stories she had heard about foreign con-men and kidnappers and prostitution rings in the Middle East. 'I want to know who you are and what you are doing in Calcutta. I want to see a passport.'
'I don't have my passport with me right this minute,' said Murugan. 'But you can have this.' He took out his wallet and handed her his ID card.
She looked it over carefully, examining the lettering and matching the photograph with his face.
When they reached the Rabindra Sadan auditorium, Murugan tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed down the road. 'Over there,' he said. 'Stop, over there.'
'Here?' Urmila found herself looking at a brick wall, across a narrow ditch. 'Why here? There's nothing here; we've left the hospital entrance behind: it's over there.'
'We don't need the entrance,' said Murugan, handing the taxi driver a fifty-rupee note. 'There's something I want to show you right here.'
'But there's nothing to see here,' Urmila said suspiciously. 'It's just a wall.'
'Look over there,' said Murugan, counting his change.
He pointed over his shoulder at the memorial to Ronald Ross. 'Did you get an eyeful of that?'
Urmila's eyes widened in surprise as they followed his finger to the marble plaque at the apex of the modest little arch. 'No,' she said. 'I've never noticed it before.' She began reading aloud: '''In the small laboratory seventy yards to the southeast of this gate Surgeon-Major Ronald Ross I.M.S. in 1898 discovered the manner in which malaria is conveyed by mosquitoes.'''
She shook her head. 'It's strange,' she said. 'I've changed buses here hundreds of times. I can't even begin to count how often I've walked past this wall. But I've never noticed that inscription up there.'
'No one notices poor Ron any more,' said Murugan. He set off towards a gate a short distance down the road. 'Follow me,' he said, beckoning her on. 'I'll show you something else.'
A chain hung suspended from the gateposts, just loose enough to let one person through at a time. Murugan went first and when Urmila caught up he pointed across the hospital's busy compound to a graceful red-brick building set well back in the grounds.
'When Ronald Ross came to work here in 1898,' Murugan said, 'that building over there was all there was of the P.G. Hospital.'
'How do you know?' she said.
He laughed. 'It's simple,' he said. 'You happen to be speaking to the world's greatest living expert on Ronnie Ross.'