‘Your father was a mysterious man who never talked about his family or his past. Maybe that’s why I was never able to foresee the threat that hovered over him and my daughter, a threat born of that dark and unfathomable past. He never let me help him and, when disaster struck, he was as alone as he’d always been, locked in the fortress of solitude he’d made for himself. Only one person ever held the keys, during the time she shared with him: Kylian.
‘But your father, like all of us, had a past, and from that past a figure emerged who would bring darkness and tragedy upon our family.
‘When your father was young and roamed the streets of Calcutta, dreaming about numbers and mathematical formulae, he met a lonely orphan boy of his own age. At the time your father lived in the most abject poverty and, like so many children in this city, he caught one of the fevers that claim thousands of lives every year. During the rainy season the monsoon unleashed powerful storms over the Bengali Peninsula, flooding the entire Ganges Delta and the surrounding area. Year after year the salt lake that still lies to the east of the city would overflow; and when the rain ceased and the water level subsided, all the dead fish were exposed to the sun, producing a cloud of poisonous fumes which winds from the mountains in the north would then blow over Calcutta, spreading illness and death like some infernal plague.
‘That year your father was a victim of the deadly winds and he would have died had it not been for his friend Jawahal, who looked after him for twenty days in a hovel made of mud and burnt wood on the banks of the Hooghly River. When he recovered, your father swore he would always protect Jawahal and would share with him whatever the future might bring, because now his life also belonged to his friend. It was a child’s oath. A pact of blood and honour. But there was something your father didn’t know: Jawahal, his guardian angel, who was barely nine years old at the time, carried in his veins an illness far more terrible than the one that had almost taken your father’s life. An illness that would manifest itself much later, at first imperceptibly, then as surely as a death sentence: madness.
‘Years later your father was told that Jawahal’s mother had set fire to herself in front of her son as a sacrificial act to the goddess Kali, and that his mother’s mother had ended her days in a miserable cell in a lunatic asylum in Bombay. Those two events were only links in the long chain of horrors and misfortunes that characterised the history of the family. But your father was a strong person, even as a boy, and he took on the responsibility of protecting his friend, whatever the outcome of his terrible inheritance.
‘It all went well until Jawahal turned eighteen, when he cold-bloodedly murdered a wealthy trader in the bazaar, just because the man refused to sell him a large medallion on the grounds that Jawahal’s appearance made the trader doubt his solvency. Your father kept Jawahal hidden in his home for months and put his own life and future at risk by protecting him from the police, who were searching for him all over town. He succeeded, but that incident was only the start of it. A year later, on the night of the Hindu new year celebrations, Jawahal set fire to a house where about a dozen old women lived, then sat outside watching the flames until the beams collapsed and the building turned to ash. This time not even your father’s cunning was able to save Jawahal from the hands of justice.
‘There was a trial – long and terrible – at the end of which Jawahal was given a life sentence for his crimes. Your father did what he could to help him, spending all his savings on lawyers, sending clean clothes to the prison where his friend was being held, bribing the guards so they wouldn’t torment him. But the only thanks he got from Jawahal were words of hatred. He accused your father of having denounced him, of abandoning him and wanting to get rid of him. He reproached him for breaking the oath they had made years earlier and swore revenge because, as he shouted from the dock when his sentence was read out, half your father’s life belonged to him.
‘Your father hid this secret in the depths of his heart and never wanted your mother to find out about it. Time erased all trace of those events. After the wedding, the first years of married life and your father’s early success, it became just a memory, a remote episode buried in the past.
‘I remember when your mother became pregnant. Your father turned into a different person, a stranger. He bought a puppy and said he was going to train it to become a watchdog, turn it into the best nanny for his future son. And he didn’t stop talking about the house he was going to build, the plans he had for the future, a new book …
‘A month later Lieutenant Michael Peake, one of your mother’s former suitors, knocked on the door with news that would sow terror in their lives: Jawahal had set fire to the secure prison block where he was being held, and had escaped. Before fleeing he’d slit his cellmate’s throat and had used his blood to write a single word on the walclass="underline" REVENGE.
‘Peake promised that he would personally look for Jawahal and protect the couple from any possible threat. Two months went by with no sign of the escaped prisoner. Until your father’s birthday.
‘Just before sunrise a parcel was delivered to him by a beggar. It contained a large medallion – the piece that had led Jawahal to commit his first murder – and a note. In it Jawahal explained that after spying on them for a few weeks and discovering that your father was now a successful man with a dazzling wife, he wished them well and would perhaps soon pay them a visit, so that they could “share what belonged to them both, like brothers”.
‘The following days were strewn with panic. One of the sentries Peake had employed to guard the house at night was found dead. Your father’s dog was discovered at the bottom of the well in the courtyard. And every morning the walls of the house were daubed with new threats, written in blood, which Peake and his men were powerless to prevent.
‘Those were difficult days for your father. His finest work had just been built, the Jheeter’s Gate Station on the western bank of the Hooghly. It was an impressive, revolutionary steel structure, the culmination of his project to establish a railway network throughout the entire country, to encourage development of local trade and modernise the provinces so that they could eventually overcome domination by the British. That was always one of his obsessions, and he could spend hours speaking passionately about it, as if it were some divine mission he’d been entrusted with. The official opening of Jheeter’s Gate was taking place at the end of the week, and to mark the occasion it was decided to charter a train that would transport three hundred and sixty-five orphans to their new home in western India. They came from the most deprived backgrounds, and your father’s project would mean a whole new life for them. It was something he had pledged to do from the very start, his life’s dream.
‘Your mother was desperate to attend the ceremony for a few hours, and she assured your father that the protection offered by Lieutenant Peake and his men would be sufficient to keep her safe.
‘When your father climbed into the train and got the engine going that was supposed to take the children to their new home, something unexpected happened. The fire. A terrible blaze spread through the various levels of the station, fanning out along the train’s carriages so that as it entered the tunnel, the train was transformed into a rolling inferno, a molten tomb for the children who travelled inside. Your father died that night, trying to save the orphans, while his dreams vanished for ever amid the flames.
‘When your mother heard the news she almost lost you. But fate grew weary of sending misfortune to your family, and you were saved. Three days later, when she was only a few days from giving birth, Jawahal and his men burst into the house and after proclaiming that the Jheeter’s Gate tragedy had been their doing, they took your mother away.