At the crossroads in front of the house, they celebrated Kali Puja. They celebrated Durga Puja too, but that was a little farther off. Where Bachha-da had his sweet shop. Same sweets all year around, but for Dol he made Dol Delights.

An album of photographs belonging to Lalitkumar should have come to Harbart by way of his inheritance. In it, color photographs, from the early years, of Rudolf Valentino, Lon Chaney (in various roles), Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, and Errol Flynn, to some from the later eras, of Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, Van Heflin, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Katharine Hepburn. Then, Lalitkumar and Shobharani in front of a Sunbeam Talbot automobile. Lalitkumar flanked by Madhu Bose and Sadhana Bose. Failed film actress Miss Ruby and Lalitkumar. Shobharani and, on a lap, Harbart. Baby Harbart.

But Harbart never laid eyes on the album. Because Dhanna had pinched it, wrapped it in some old clothes and stashed it away at the bottom of his cupboard.

Lalitkumar had amassed another collection—cigarette holders. Those were looted not by Dhanna, alas, but by someone else. Dhanna had looked everywhere but never managed to locate the cigar box in which Lalitkumar had lovingly hoarded them. Thanks to Lalitkumar’s wicked ways of the West, Dhanna was able to steal, now and then, his imported cigarettes and his Scotch. Now and then, some money too. Lalitkumar was not the sort of man who ever kept count, so he never noticed all this pilfering. Beyond a shadow of doubt, had Lalitkumar not blown away on the movies his incredible wartime fortune made from scrap iron and copper, Harbart’s life story would have been very different indeed.

Harbart Sarkar. Five feet six inches tall. Fair. Features sharp, build Caucasian. Slim. Lalitkumar must have felt that, somewhere, the boy had a Hollywood-ish air, a Leslie Howard-ish air and so the boy got a shahebi name—Harbart. Harbart’s mother was a practically pure-white beauty, bred in the shaded-shadowy homes of North Calcutta. Lalitkumar himself was no less dashing and debonair. Anyway, no matter how, Harbart’s manner was always a bit hero-hero-ish. This Western movie star effect was heightened by the fact that he spent most of his time living in fear. The fear drained the blood from his face and made him paler, hence fairer. Because of his mother and father, he lived in fear of cars and electricity and then the fear of Dhanna-dada’s thrashings and then the fear of Jyathamoshai’s sudden cock-crows of “Peeyu kahaan! Peeyu kahaan!”

And the entirely new kind of fear that Binu later brought with him.

*

When he was fourteen, Harbart had an extraordinary experience. One afternoon, rummaging through the heap of old books in that last room, he discovered an old tin trunk. In it lay a human skull and some longish bones. No one in the family had ever studied medicine. Nor magic. Unprepared for the sight of it, Harbart had at first been terrified by the skull, its eyeless sockets, the teeth. But in time, time and again, as if in a drunken stupor, Harbart would open the trunk and stare at the skull and bones. Try to imagine the man they had been. No matter whom he’d been, an overwhelming sadness would engulf Harbart.