Holder of the World - Bharati Mukherjee [53]
Venn, I know, is amazed. I may not have the National Weather Service and satellite-tracking data to feed into my little model of Fort St. Sebastian, but I do have the daily meteorologic observations of Mir Ali, the customs official who logged the contents of every ship. I have the sales receipts of every licensed store in the fort, and a record of official exports.
“Venn,” I plead, “tell me when I have enough. Make your next program X-29-1695.” He’s supportive; he’s impressed. Maybe, he says, studying the original engravings of “White Town, Fort Sebastian,” and the layouts of both Black and White Towns, and the punishment records, with every house demarcated as to owner and function, he could begin to create a very bare stage, a kind of Beckettian rendering of seventeenth-century South India. It would have the specificity I require, and a diamond might still be lost, but in the fullness of time, he says, computer-assisted time reconstruction will be possible. It will be, literally, the mother of all data bases. It will be time on a scale of 1:1, with a new concept of real time. He won’t call it time-travel. Neither we, nor time, will have traveled an inch, or a millisecond.
6
THE COMPANY’S regulations required Chief Factor Prynne to keep an official diary and consultation books of meetings with his subordinates and with visiting members of the Council at Fort St. George. But Gabriel Legge, too, maintained a diary, which for a man as restless as he was seems surprising. Perhaps Gabriel distrusted Prynne to provide for Leadenhall Street truthful summaries of daily business conducted in St. Sebastian, its small, dingy subordinate factory. Or perhaps he was contemptuous of the young apprentices and writers, like Thomas Tringham, who had wept like a woman over his hound’s carcass in full view of local mobs on the beach.
Gabriel Legge’s Diary is useful in that it unintentionally discloses how often he deserted Hannah in Henry Hedges’ eerie house, with no company other than the maid Bhagmati.
At least in the first year and a half of his tenure of the Company’s junior factorship in St. Sebastian, he seemed to have enjoyed good relations with the difficult Cephus Prynne. Here are some of his Diary entries:
February 11, 1695: Obtained orders from Chief Factor Prynne to vissit the factories south of the Penner River and conduct inspections concerning improprieties. Sett saile on the small English Pinck, called the Little Teresa.
February 20: Very foule weather.
February 25: A Dutch Fly-boate wee found rideing, its foretopmast crackt. We invited its Commander, Senr. Hartsinck, on board the Little Teresa, whereupon the Commander informed us that in its passage the Fly-boate lost a man overboard. We demanded as gift from Senr. Hartsinck refreshment of fruite, Hoggs And water, which gift the Dutch Commander was happy to relinquish.
February 28: Wee came on shoare at Sadraspatam, the Agent receiving us with respect.
June 30: Wee are informed that our factorye at St. Andrews is frequently home to Romish Priests. Our Affaires here are in foolish Posture. Wee have little confidence in the ability of Mr. Richard Ruckle, who was re-entertained as Chief at a sallary of 100 LI per annum.
August 26: Wee advise you to see to the sending home of Mr. Richard Ruckle, and to appoint a more fitt and faithfull person as Chief at St. Andrews.
October 18: Wee are informed of complaints concerning Our Cloath which merchants here in St. Catherine describe as being full of Mothes. Wee have also been in receipt of complaints concerning white Ants in some of Our Cloath.
November 29: Wee noate that the Counsell at Fort St. George recommends