The Mulberry Empire

The blade was curved, whether for grace or use. Though the handle was encrusted and filthy, the quarter-inch at the blade’s edge shone. This knife had been used regularly, and recently. Masson had heard of oriental knives that cut flesh as easily as butter, and placed the tip of his forefinger on the edge of the blade. It rested there, the blade trembling slightly in Masson’s hand.

‘You are left-handed, I perceive,’ Das said.

‘I use both equally well,’ Masson said, fixed on the thin contact between finger and blade, insubstantial as a point in geometry.

‘That is bad luck, very bad luck,’ Das said, drawing back from Masson with his shock of red hair and his divided soul. He made a warding-off hiss, like the noise of hot metal in water.

Masson smiled his wide open devouring smile. ‘On the contrary,’ he said. ‘It’s a piece of very good luck.’ And he moved the knife, a small movement, half an inch, putting no pressure on the handle. There was a sudden heat in the finger, and underneath the blade, the colour had fled the dirty finger, a little field of tripe-white as the blood drew back under the blade. Masson made his pain-noise, the same hissing Das had made, the same sound of hot metal in water. The blood returned and welled up, wine-dark, in the little flap of severed flesh the knife had made. White, translucent, an onion’s slice. Masson put down the magnificent knife, and sucked his salty finger for a minute. When he took it out, the finger was clean, and white in his dirty hand.

‘A good knife,’ he said, picking it up again.

‘Whence does it originate, in your opinion?’ Das asked.

Masson turned the knife over again. The handle was so encrusted with rust and dirt that it was hard to see if it were decorated. He ran the nail of his forefinger over the surface, and there was some raised pattern – he followed the line – some arabesque – some writing, surely. By the whiplash feel of it, he supposed it to be Arabic, some belligerent verse of the Koran. Not Indian; he somehow knew this, without knowing how he knew. He guessed at Persian. It felt like damascene work, anyway.

He said this to Das as he was feeling the knife. Das clapped his hands with pleasure. ‘Indeed, indeed, excellent, quite on the nail, as you would say,’ he said. ‘I had an interesting visitor this week, a traveller, who had acquired some curiosities. I cannot account for it, but he was eager to disembarrass himself of some old Persian treasures. That, I think, is the finest of his hoard, alas, and sadly in want of care, but the other objects I acquired from him have their own interest and even, I dare say, some measure of value. Would you, by any chance, care to …’

‘In a furious hurry, was he, your friend?’ Masson said. ‘And I have no doubt that you found yourself in possession of a large quantity of Persian antiquities without requiring too much of the gentleman?’ Das looked outraged at the suggestion that he might be in the habit of consorting with thieves. It took a moment to make him realize that Masson was only casting the first shot in the exchanges over the final price, and for a while he seemed unwilling to show his newly acquired objects at all.

But in the end, he yielded to the undeniable argument of lucre, and Masson was soon looking, with hungry eyes, at an array of metalwork spread out on Das’s table. For a moment he was incongruously reminded of this morning’s exercise with the dismantled musket, as he pored over the miscellaneous array of mostly Persian, mostly indifferent antique objects. In the end – it took an hour – he settled, besides the knife, for a little silver dish and three unfamiliar coins, interesting in appearance, unaccountably so. As was customary these days, he paid Mr Das with a combination of his army pay and the restitution of one of Masson’s own early purchases, before he had developed a proper eye. This process of secondary haggling occupied another half an hour, as Masson attempted to return to Das some of the worthless trash he had originally passed off on Masson at any price. Das, indignant at being insulted in such a manner that it should be suggested that his shop should ever be soiled with such bazaar trinkets, and denying furiously that he was the first source of the trash, attempted to inveigle out of Masson the beautiful little silver medal he had sold him no more than three weeks before, presumably having realized its worth in the interim. At length an agreement was reached, leaving both Masson and Das sore and suspicious, and they settled down to talk, undisturbed by customers, the army, Suggs or Sale.

‘Mr Das,’ Masson began. ‘Speaking of your visitor last week, if you were to travel and were obliged to live on the proceeds of what you could sell on your travels, what goods would you take?’

‘I do not understand your question, Mr Masson,’ Das said. He picked his nose meditatively and examined the contents before flicking it at the floor. ‘I have no need or desire to travel, as you well know, I am sure.’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ Masson said. He persevered. ‘In a hypothetical situation, however, if you were obliged to travel, and the only means of support you had was the sale of what goods you could carry, what would you take with you to sell?’

‘Ah,’ Das said, now having got the point. ‘Like my friend, earlier this week, in flight from his own shadow and selling his worldly goods at a highly disadvantageous rate, I can assure you.’

‘Disadvantageous to him, Mr Das.’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ Das said. He had a disconcerting habit of taking up Masson’s expressions and repeating them, a minute or two later. You could see the quick boy he must have been. ‘Well, I am sure you are aware that this is a simple matter of working out the relationship between value and bulk.’

The conversation ran its course; they agreed on silver, as being most easily disguised and most universally valued. ‘But why,’ said Das, ‘why, my friend, this sudden interest?’

It was time for Masson to go. He consigned the Persian dish to the cupboard where he stored his things, saying a silent goodbye to it, and thanked Das for the chai. He left the knife with Das. The heat and damp were insufferable, and, returning to the barracks, Masson lengthened his journey by remaining in the shade. Anyone watching him might have thought there was some superstition which directed his route, like a child leaping the cracks in the pavement. Certainly he drew the attention of the Calcutta streets; the red-toothed men squatting on their haunches chewing paan and spitting consumptively followed him with their incurious eyes. They wondered at this peeled-raw man, ugly and gawky, shrinking into the darker side of the street, hugging the wall like a conspirator, looking down, hiding something.

4.

Masson was hiding something, as it happened. It was his plan for escape. It had seemed audacious, impossible, but now Das, with his idle conversation, had found something for him. Until now, Masson had seen no way to be in the East, where he wanted to be, other than by the way he had chosen. The surety that he could only find the East he had dreamt of by remaining where he was, serving the Company at the Company’s request, all at once left him.

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