River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [69]
Left to fend for himself in Calcutta, Robin had succeeded in using his talents in such a way as to enmesh himself in a scandal: he had started producing ‘Chinnery’ paintings. He was so familiar with his father’s style and methods that it was no great challenge for him to turn out canvases in the same manner and he succeeded in selling several of these, at great profit, claiming that they were works his father had left behind. But eventually the fraud was discovered, and rather than face a jail sentence in India, Robin had followed the example of his uncle William – he had fled the country. Rumour had it that he had run off to join his father, but where exactly he had gone, Paulette did not know. It was not till she learnt from Mr Penrose that George Chinnery had taken up residence in Macau that it occurred to her that this was presumably where Robin had gone – which meant that she might well run into him if she were to accompany Mr Penrose to the painter’s house. Given the circumstances of their last meeting she could not rule out the possibility that he might indeed find an opportunity to exact his revenge.
Although she remembered Robin with great warmth, and had often regretted the loss of his friendship, she knew also that he had a waspish, gossipy side and was perfectly capable of inventing stories that might cause a rift between herself and Fitcher. In considering all this, she let slip the moment when it would have been easiest to speak frankly to Fitcher about her connection with Robin. Something else came up and the opportunity was lost.
*
At Bahram’s insistence, both Neel and Ah Fatt stayed with him while the Anahita’s repairs and refurbishments were being completed: each had a cabin to himself – an almost unimaginable luxury after the privations of the last many months. Day and night they were plied with food: every morning at breakfast, Bahram would summon his personal khansamah, Mesto – a dark giant of a man with a shining bald head and well-muscled arms – and confer with him on what was to be served to his godson for lunch and dinner. Each meal was a feast of a different kind, sometimes Parsi, with mutton dhansak and brown rice; okra cooked with fish roe and patra-ni-machhi, fillets of fish steamed in banana leaves; sometimes Goan, with shrimp rissoles and chicken xacuti and fiery prawn xeque-xeques; sometimes East Indian, with a mutton-and-pumpkin curry and sarpatel.
But the situation was not without its discomforts: Neel had to be careful at all times to maintain the pretence that he and Ah Fatt were casual acquaintances who had met by chance in Singapore; and he also had to be vigilant about concealing his awareness of Ah Fatt’s real relationship with Bahram. This was not always easy for there were times when Bahram was himself unable to keep a firm hold on his god-parental mask: being spontaneous and affectionate by nature he would suddenly fold Ah Fatt into his arms and give him a huge hug; or else he would call him ‘beta’ or ‘deekro’ and pile food on his plate.
The fact that Ah Fatt was often unresponsive, and sometimes even resentful, of these displays of affection seemed to have little effect on Bahram. It was as though he were living, for the first time, the life he aspired to – in which he was a patriarch in his own right, passing on his wisdom and experience to his son.
To Neel there was something touching about the very clumsiness and excess of Bahram’s expressions of affection. He understood why they irritated Ah Fatt, and he understood too why he might regard them as scant compensation for the long years of neglect during which he had felt himself to be disowned and unacknowledged by his father.
But to Neel what was most striking about Bahram’s relationship with Ah Fatt was not its faults but rather the fact that it existed at all. In his previous life, in Calcutta, Neel had known many men who had fathered illegitimate