Harbart was coming down the wooden stairs on the right of the framed mirror, and on the left the one who was going up, the one whose back, bobbed hair, shoulders, waist, white clothes, frills on those white clothes … The lady doctor’s profile glimpsed through the car window in the winter of 1991 was for Harbart an extraordinary encounter, lady doctor, wait, please, don’t go away like that. I don’t have breath enough to run after your car, I’ll never catch up with your car—wait, listen—what harm can it do just to listen, if only I could stand in front of the mirror again and if only I could remember again—oh …

Harbart’s head hurts. The Ulster is too warm around him. Its buttons too big. As he wrenches them open, one, like a big black medal, comes off and flies from his fingers. Harbart gropes on the ground for it. Picks it up. Puts it in his pocket.

What did Harbart want to tell the lady doctor?

Harbart walks on. “Cat, bat, water, dog, fish!” Harbart mutters under his breath.

When he went out in the evenings, evening after evening, he spent hours waiting outside the nursing home but never saw the lady doctor again. He was angry. Hurt. But who gave a damn? The lady doctor had gone away. Didn’t stop to listen to any one.

Harbart walks on. Makes a sound with his mouth like a machine gun. Harbart has seen a machine gun. In a movie.

Ratatatatat.

*

A half-mad man stumbled in. His sister had run away and a few months later, after identifying fillets of her flesh in a found trunk at Howrah Station, he had lost his mind. So he had come to Harbart.

“Can’t bear the sight of trunks—suitcases—closed boxes of any kind. Keep seeing her hair hanging out from under the lid. I’ll open the lid, and then I’ll see—”

The man’s clothes were unwashed and untidy. Bursting into tears, he shook his head and pleaded, “Can’t. Can’t stand it anymore. Please help me. Or I shall die. I beg you, please help me. You can, you can communicate with the dead … my sister …”

His sobs grew louder, swelled into wails. He cried for a long time. Then he took out a grubby handkerchief and wiped his face, rubbed his glasses.

“What was her name?”

“Shanta.”

Santa—Harbart wrote on a piece of paper. Then drew a line under it.

“Got a photo or something?”

“No. But after she’d run away, a letter had come. I’ve got a Xerox. Will that do?”

“Why a Xerox?’

“The original’s at police headquarters, in Lalbazar.”

“Uh oh! Police! Lovely time you’re having, aren’t you? Alright, I don’t need to read it. Just to touch it. But you have to be patient, sit for a while. In fact, why don’t you go out for a bit? These things tend to work better when I’m on my own.”

“Alright, I’ll come back later. But please, you have to help me. I’m telling you I’ll go mad otherwise.”