THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT.
"And since they cannot spend or use aright
The little time here given them in trust,
But lavish it in weary undelight
Of foolish toil, and trouble, strife and lust--
They naturally clamour to inherit
The Everlasting Future--that their merit
May have full scope.... As surely is most just."
--_The City of Dreadful Night._
The difficulty is to prevent this account from growing steadily
unwholesome. But one cannot rake through a big city without encountering
muck.
The Police kept their word. In five short minutes, as they had
prophesied, their charge was lost as he had never been lost before.
"Where are we now?" "Somewhere off the Chitpore Road, but you wouldn't
understand if you were told. Follow now, and step pretty much where we
step--there's a good deal of filth hereabouts."
The thick, greasy night shuts in everything. We have gone beyond the
ancestral houses of the Ghoses of the Boses, beyond the lamps, the
smells, and the crowd of Chitpore Road, and have come to a great
wilderness of packed houses--just such mysterious, conspiring tenements
as Dickens would have loved. There is no breeze here, and the air is
perceptibly warmer. If Calcutta keeps such luxuries as Commissioners of
Sewers and Paving, they die before they reach this place. The air is
heavy with a faint, sour stench--the essence of long-neglected
abominations--and it cannot escape from among the tall, three-storied
houses. "This, my dear Sir, is a _perfectly_ respectable quarter as
quarters go. That house at the head of the alley, with the elaborate
stucco-work round the top of the door, was built long ago by a
celebrated midwife. Great people used to live here once. Now it's
the--Aha! Look out for that carriage." A big mail-phaeton crashes out of
the darkness and, recklessly driven, disappears. The wonder is how it
ever got into this maze of narrow streets, where nobody seems to be
moving, and where the dull throbbing of the city's life only comes
faintly and by snatches. "Now it's the what?" "The St. John's Wood of
Calcutta--for the rich Babus. That 'fitton' belonged to one of them."
"Well, it's not much of a place to look at!" "Don't judge by
appearances. About here live the women who have beggared kings. We
aren't going to let you down into unadulterated vice all at once. You
must see it first with the gilding on--and mind that rotten board."
Stand at the bottom of a lift shaft and look upwards. Then you will get
both the size and the design of the tiny courtyard round which one of
these big dark houses is built. The central square may be perhaps ten
feet every way, but the balconies that run inside it overhang, and seem
to cut away half the available space. To reach the square a man must go
round many corners, down a covered-in way, and up and down two or three
baffling and confused steps. "Now you will understand," say the Police,
kindly, as their charge blunders, shin-first into a well-dark winding
staircase, "that these are not the sort of places to visit alone." "Who
wants to? Of all the disgusting, inaccessible dens--Holy Cupid, what's
this?"
A glare of light on the stair-head, a clink of innumerable bangles, a
rustle of much fine gauze, and the Dainty Iniquity stands revealed,
blazing--literally blazing--with jewellery from head to foot. Take one
of the fairest miniatures that the Delhi painters draw, and multiply it
by ten; throw in one of Angelica Kaufmann's best portraits, and add
anything that you can think of from Beckford to Lalla Rookh, and you
will still fall short of the merits of that perfect face! For an
instant, even the grim, professional gravity of the Police is relaxed in
the presence of the Dainty Iniquity with the gems, who so prettily
invites every one to be seated, and proffers such refreshments as she
conceives the palates of the barbarians would prefer. Her maids are only
one degree less gorgeous than she. Half a lakh, or fifty thousand
pounds' worth--it is easier to credit the latter statement than the
former--are disposed upon her little body. Each hand carries five
jewelled rings which are connected by golden chains to a great jewelled
boss of gold in the centre of the back of the hand. Ear-rings weighted
with emeralds and pearls, diamond nose-rings, and how many other hundred
articles make up the list of adornments. English furniture of a gorgeous
and gimcrack kind, unlimited chandeliers, and a collection of atrocious
Continental prints are scattered about the house, and on every landing
squats or loafs a Bengali who can talk English with unholy fluency. The
recurrence suggests--only suggests, mind--a grim possibility of the
affectation of excessive virtue by day, tempered with the sort of
unwholesome enjoyment after dusk--this loafing and lobbying and
chattering and smoking, and unless the bottles lie, tippling, among the
foul-tongued handmaidens of the Dainty Iniquity. How many men follow
this double, deleterious sort of life? The Police are discreetly dumb.
"Now don't go talking about 'domiciliary visits' just because this one
happens to be a pretty woman. We've _got_ to know these creatures. They
make the rich man and the poor spend their money; and when a man can't
get money for 'em honestly, he comes under _our_ notice. Now do you see?
If there was any domiciliary 'visit' about it, the whole houseful would
be hidden past our finding as soon as we turned up in the courtyard.
We're friends--to a certain extent." And, indeed, it seemed no difficult
thing to be friends to any extent with the Dainty Iniquity who was so
surpassingly different from all that experience taught of the beauty of
the East. Here was the face from which a man could write _Lalla Rookhs_
by the dozen, and believe every work that he wrote. Hers was the beauty
that Byron sang of when he wrote--
"Remember, if you come here alone, the chances are that you'll be
clubbed, or stuck, or, anyhow, mobbed. You'll understand that this part
of the world is shut to Europeans--absolutely. Mind the steps, and
follow on." The vision dies out in the smells and gross darkness of the
night, in evil, time-rotten brickwork, and another wilderness of shut-up
houses.
Follows, after another plunge into a passage of a courtyard, and up a
staircase, the apparition of a Fat Vice, in whom is no sort of romance,
nor beauty, but unlimited coarse humour. She too is studded with jewels,
and her house is even finer than the house of the other, and more
infested with the extraordinary men who speak such good English and are
so deferential to the Police. The Fat Vice has been a great leader of
fashion in her day, and stripped a zemindar Raja to his last
acre--insomuch that he ended in the House of Correction for a theft
committed for her sake. Native opinion has it that she is a "monstrous
well-preserved woman." On this point, as on some others, the races will
agree to differ.
The scene changes suddenly as a slide in a magic lantern. Dainty
Iniquity and Fat Vice slide away on a roll of streets and alleys, each
more squalid than its predecessor. We are "somewhere at the back of the
Machua Bazar," well in the heart of the city. There are no houses
here--nothing but acres and acres, it seems, of foul wattle-and-dab
huts, any one of which would be a disgrace to a frontier village. The
whole arrangement is a neatly contrived germ and fire trap, reflecting
great credit upon the Calcutta Municipality.
"What happens when these pigsties catch fire?" "They're built up again,"
say the Police, as though this were the natural order of things. "Land
is immensely valuable here." All the more reason, then, to turn several
Hausmanns loose into the city, with instructions to make barracks for
the population that cannot find room in the huts and sleeps in the open
ways, cherishing dogs and worse, much worse, in its unwashen bosom.
"Here is a licensed coffee-shop. This is where your servants go for
amusement and to see nautches." There is a huge thatch shed,
ingeniously ornamented with insecure kerosene lamps, and crammed with
drivers, cooks, small store-keepers and the like. Never a sign of a
European. Why? "Because if an Englishman messed about here, he'd get
into trouble. Men don't come here unless they're drunk or have lost
their way." The hack-drivers--they have the privilege of voting, have
they not?--look peaceful enough as they squat on tables or crowd by the
doors to watch the nautch that is going forward. Five pitiful
draggle-tails are huddled together on a bench under one of the lamps,
while the sixth is squirming and shrieking before the impassive crowd.
She sings of love as understood by the Oriental--the love that dries the
heart and consumes the liver. In this place, the words that would look
so well on paper have an evil and ghastly significance. The men stare or
sup tumblers and cups of a filthy decoction, and the _kunchenee_ howls
with renewed vigour in the presence of the Police. Where the Dainty
Iniquity was hung with gold and gems, she is trapped with pewter and
glass; and where there was heavy embroidery on the Fat Vice's dress,
defaced, stamped tinsel faithfully reduplicates the pattern on the
tawdry robes of the _kunchenee_.
Two or three men with uneasy consciences have quietly slipped out of the
coffee-shop into the mazes of the huts. The Police laugh, and those
nearest in the crowd laugh applausively, as in duty bound. Perhaps the
rabbits grin uneasily when the ferret lands at the bottom of the burrow
and begins to clear the warren.
"The _chandoo_-shops shut up at six, so you'll have to see
opium-smoking before dark some day. No, you won't, though." The
detective makes for a half-opened door of a hut whence floats the
fragrance of the Black Smoke. Those of the inhabitants who are able
promptly clear out--they have no love for the Police--and there remain
only four men lying down and one standing up. This latter has a pet
mongoose coiled round his neck. He speaks English fluently. Yes, he has
no fear. It was a private smoking party and--"No business to-night--show
how you smoke opium." "Aha! You want to see. Very good, I show. Hiya!
you"--he kicks a man on the floor--"show how opium-smoke." The kickee
grunts lazily and turns on his elbow. The mongoose, always keeping to
the man's neck, erects every hair of its body like an angry cat, and
chatters in its owner's ear. The lamp for the opium-pipe is the only one
in the room, and lights a scene as wild as anything in the witches'
revel; the mongoose acting as the familiar spirit. A voice from the
ground says, in tones of infinite weariness: "You take _afim_, so"--a
long, long pause, and another kick from the man possessed of the
devil--the mongoose. "You take _afim_?" He takes a pellet of the black,
treacly stuff on the end of a knitting-needle. "And light _afim_." He
plunges the pellet into the night-light, where it swells and fumes
greasily. "And then you put it in your pipe." The smoking pellet is
jammed into the tiny bowl of the thick, bamboo-stemmed pipe, and all
speech ceases, except the unearthly chitter of the mongoose. The man on
the ground is sucking at his pipe, and when the smoking pellet has
ceased to smoke will be half-way to _Nibban_. "Now you go," says the man
with the mongoose. "I am going smoke." The hut floor closes upon a
red-lit view of huddled legs and bodies, and the man with the mongoose
sinking, sinking on to his knees, his head bowed forward, and the little
hairy devil chattering on the nape of his neck.
After this the fetid night air seems almost cool, for the hut is as hot
as a furnace. "Now for Colootollah. Come through the huts. There is no
decoration about _this_ vice."
The huts now gave place to houses very tall and spacious and very dark.
But for the narrowness of the streets we might have stumbled upon
Chowringhi in the dark. An hour and a half has passed, and up to this
time we have not crossed our trail once. "You might knock about the city
for a night and never cross the same line. Recollect Calcutta isn't one
of your poky up-country cities of a lakh and a half of people." "How
long does it take to know it then?" "About a lifetime, and even then
some of the streets puzzle you." "How much has the head of a ward to
know?" "Every house in his ward if he can, who owns it, what sort of
character the inhabitants are, who are their friends, who go out and in,
who loaf about the place at night, and so on and so on." "And he knows
all this by night as well as by day?" "Of course. Why shouldn't he?" "No
reason in the world. Only it's pitchy black just now, and I'd like to
see where this alley is going to end." "Round the corner beyond that
dead wall. There's a lamp there. Then you'll be able to see." A shadow
flits out of a gulley and disappears. "Who's that?" "Sergeant of Police
just to see where we're going in case of accidents." Another shadow
staggers into the darkness. "Who's _that_?" "Soldier from the Fort or a
sailor from the ships. I couldn't quite see." The Police open a shut
door in a high wall, and stumble unceremoniously among a gang of women
cooking their food. The floor is of beaten earth, the steps that lead
into the upper stories are unspeakably grimy, and the heat is the heat
of April. The women rise hastily, and the light of the bull's eye--for
the Police have now lighted a lantern in regular London fashion--shows
six bleared faces--one a half-native half-Chinese one, and the others
Bengali. "There are no men here!" they cry. "The house is empty." Then
they grin and jabber and chew _pan_ and spit, and hurry up the steps
into the darkness. A range of three big rooms has been knocked into one
here, and there is some sort of arrangement of mats. But an average
country-bred is more sumptuously accommodated in an Englishman's stable.
A horse would snort at the accommodation.
"Nice sort of place, isn't it?" say the Police, genially. "This is where
the sailors get robbed and drunk." "They must be blind drunk before they
come." "Na--na! Na sailor men ee--yah!" chorus the women, catching at
the one word they understand. "Arl gone!" The Police take no notice, but
tramp down the big room with the mat loose-boxes. A woman is shivering
in one of these. "What's the matter?" "Fever. Seek. Vary, _vary_ seek."
She huddles herself into a heap on the _charpoy_ and groans.
A tiny, pitch-black closet opens out of the long room, and into this the
Police plunge. "Hullo! What's here?" Down flashes the lantern, and a
white hand with black nails comes out of the gloom. Somebody is asleep
or drunk in the cot. The ring of lantern light travels slowly up and
down the body. "A sailor from the ships. He'll be robbed before the
morning most likely." The man is sleeping like a little child, both arms
thrown over his head, and he is not unhandsome. He is shoeless, and
there are huge holes in his stockings. He is a pure-blooded white, and
carries the flush of innocent sleep on his cheeks.
The light is turned off, and the Police depart; while the woman in the
loose-box shivers, and moans that she is "seek; vary, _vary_ seek."